Feeding blackworms

[stefanie]

everything i've read about keeping blackworms alive has said that they'll live off of their fat stores for a very long time, and dont really need to be fed. but even the smallest portions of blackworms that i can buy would last over a month, if i didnt throw them out because they start looking pretty skinny. i hate throwing away perfectly good newt/fish food (especially since they are still alive, even if they are worms), but i dont want to feed any of my animals starving worms. so what can i feed them? any suggestions as to what foods would be most nutritious? i can imagine that they probably arent fed too well in pet shops...

 

[jennifer]

Give them a piece of chopped earthworm. In my experience, blackworms ignore any type of pellet food, but they quickly attack pieces of earthworm they find. They will also eat (strangely enough) unbleached paper towels and cork bark. However, I do not know if they will eat at all in the fridge - you might have to keep them at room temp in a larger container than what you'd store them in.

 

[stefanie]

Thanks Jen.

can they be kept at room temperature for long periods of time? i'd love to leave mine somewhere other than the fridge. i was actually thinking about setting up a blackworm only tank a while back. something like a 2 gal that i could put my newt into for feeding, to help keep the newt tank clean, and give the blackworms a healthier living environment. but everything i've read says to keep them in the fridge, so i dont know how possible it would be. }

 

[jennifer]

Sure, you could have a blackworm tank at room temp. I'd recommend using a container that has a good size (length x width), but shallow. A plastic shoe box type container might work better than a 2-gal aquarium. Give them some rocks to hide under, some unbleached paper toweling, they'll be happy as clams. They will reproduce, but very slowly. They might need some airation (depending on how shallow the tub is) and regular water changes of course.

I'm not sure how well it would work to put the newt in the blackworm tank for feeding. The blackworms tend to make their water rather mucky.

 

[pin-pin]

To add to Jen's comments, frequent water changes is important. I've found that once one or two worms die, their decomposition greatly accelerates the death of the entire batch.

Also, I've found that "worm keepers" (basically a mesh netting that can strain all the worms out) minimizes the loss of worms during a water change. Maybe you can find/design a larger version on this.

 

[joeri]

Nifty little box.
Now that I see they are rather easy to keep I might order some, not sure where though. My local petshop doesn't have them. Maybe on special request

btw Stefanie: google provides some great links on "blackworms"

 

[i.]

At my local store, they told me to rinse the worms out with a brine shrimp net. I put the worms in there and rinse off under the tap every day, it cleans the amonia from their poop off and they remain healthy a lot longer and don't die. Before I did that I could never buy a big amount of worms at the same time, after a while the worm pot became foul. I'm talking about blood worms though, and I'm not familiar with black worms but I would think it would work out the same.

 

[jennifer]

Newton, as you live in the US, chances are 99.9% that the shop is selling you blackworms. (I've only ever heard one believable account of real live bloodworms sold in the US.) The shop is just idiotically calling them "bloodworms", which a lot of pet shops do. If you compare them to frozen bloodworms, you'll see that they are not bloodworms.

 

[joe]

I agree with Pin-Pin Wei: adding fresh water is critical each day or so (I try to do this daily but realistically it's closer to every 2 days for me). And right now I've got a colony that is going on 2 months old with no crash.

I'm just guessing here but if you have a tank at room temperature, I'd think that: (a) they'd reproduce marginally faster; and (b) water changes would be more critical (as dead worms would decompose quicker reducing the overall water quality).