real live bloodworms!

[orandablue]

Does anyone have experience feeding blood worms from their own backyard? Do you Potassium promangate dip then feed? What are the parasite/and other intestinal dangers? I already started feeding but was stupid and fed some other type of regular mosquito larvae that had bristles on it which now I find out may block the fish intestines!
I am feeding 1 1/2 month old fry about 1/2" long fry. I guess I will see what happens but have never had much luk w real "wild collected" food!
I will be watching for allergic reactions as well. Maybe i should get a microscope!??

[johnatoranchu]

Just feed as is. Live bloodworm are fine, life's too short to worry about potential maybes. Your fry are very small for 6 week olds so the more live food you can give them the better. I would still be feeding 1/2 inch fry on newly hatched brine shrimp.
John

[bigbettadan]

I feed live bloodworm, daphina, and ML when I have it. I have yet to have a problem.

Dan

[orandablue]

I "sorted mosquito larvae the other day....farm girl at heart...well yes the fry that ate the larvae are fine. They are outside in temperature fluxes, bugs..bird crap...and they look so much better than the "protected" fry inside under a shop light! (Go mother nature) So I sorted Bws out and they are the small bloodworms of course not the big ones from some other country or something. I am wondering if i can 'gut load' blood worms!? I hear they eat cow paddies!? The real trick will be getting more! This was purely accidental BUT it has been a Monsoon in Ohio so I am dreading...or anticipating the bugs to come. LOL
I did potassium promang dip the larvae and they are still alive!

[bekko]

If you trust the water and food you are using to raise bloodworms and mosquitoes then you do not need to worry about disease. It is when you collect such stuff from ponds, swamps, etc. which have wild fish that you need to worry.

With bloodworms, you can feed the worm (larvae) along with the tube it builds around itself. When growing them on green water, yeast or cereal meal, the goldfish will eat the worm and the congealed algae, yeast or meal and associated microbes surrounding the worm. Both are nutritious in their own way.

You can cultivate about a hundred bloodworms per square foot per week. It sounds like a lot, but really isn't. A hundred bloodworms are worth a few cents.

Bloodworms are masters of disguise and can conceal not only their body, but their scent as well. I have some tanks which always have bloodworms growing on the bottom, despite the hungry fish foraging about. If the bottom of the tank is brushed to dislodge the bloodworms tubes, the fish can suddenly smell them and go into a feeding frenzy.

In a given amount of space, you can grow more mosquito biomass than bloodworms. Since you cannot exclude one without excluding the other, growing both at the same time is common. To really attract a lot of mosquitoes to lay eggs, the water needs to be a little stale while midge fly will lay eggs in fresh clear water. You can also collect the rafts of mosquito eggs and hatch them in clear water. If eggs are placed in a separate hatching container each day, then you can grow the mosquito larvae to just the right size for the fish you are feeding. Newly hatched mosquito larvae are eaten by goldfish fry which are only a week or so old.

-steve