Food parasites or disease?

[ian]

I am a bit worried that disaese or parasites can highjack through the live food I feed my newts after reading the on the article "Don't Do This! Captive Care Catastrophes". There were some cases which many animals died from eating diseased livefood.

This time of the year, even my local fishing store will carry some worms, I hesitated to go buy them for my newts. Should I go for the worms?

Here is some history with my newts and worms. After I fed them earthworms from bait shop, my smallest newts started to reject food, and after 2 months, it died. One of my female also started to develope cloudy eyes, but still not cured nor get worse in the past half a year. I suspect it has bloat. I both got this newts 1 year ago and I fed them earthworm half a year ago. I stoped feeding them earthworm as the winter started, sicne my bait shop dont provide live bait during winter.

During my feeding of live earthworm, my other newts, including the cloudy eye individual, started breeding and laid 100+ eggs. I also fed some early morphs with earth worms. And all of them are still doing fine except the cloudy eye is still having a cloudy eye.

Do you think the two bad cases has to do with worms? How do I gain confidence with live food feeding? I can I ensure the food I purchased will not result in any problem? Sorry for the long story. Thanks.

 

[richard]

i highly doubt that the earthworms could be diseased. i have used earthworms from the bait shop often, and never experienced the misfortune of disease. My bait shop farms its own worms. maybe that has something to do with it? you should grow your own worms to maintain a safe food source.

 

[ian]

But I think an earthworm culture is kind of slow. And with the summer on Ontario with the maximum temperture of low 30. To the winter temperature of -15. Keep worm alive will be difficult as well.

Do you think I can test the worm to some other animal first? Such as fish?

 

[richard]

that sounds good. try that with the end of a worm (half an inch off of the back). this may not be accurate as a fish is not a newt...lol
give it a go

 

[jennifer]

snip "During my feeding of live earthworm, my other newts, including the cloudy eye individual, started breeding and laid 100+ eggs."

That's a pretty impressive testimonial in favor of earthworms, in my opinion. Worms are the best growth food. I highly doubt the two problems you had were related to anything in the earthworms. Many of us have used bait worms for years.

 

[ian]

If I want to feed my morphs earthworm by chopping the worm into tiny pieces, should I kill the wrom chop it and freeze the remaining? Or jsut cut the part that is enough from a live worm and then leave the living part in the fridge? 2nd one is kind of bad for the worm. But if I just do the freezing way, will there be a problem with the food?

You think for morphs, feeding earthworm or frozen bloodworm is better? It might be clear that earthworm is better, but just dont know if there is any hidden problem with it.

 

[joan]

You also have to keep in mind that in the wild, this is what they would eat. ALL worms carry weird nematodes and bugs, and most healthy caudates are not affected by these. If your animals are stressed or otherwise already ill, the nasties in the worms may be taking root because the immune system is not able to fight them off as it normally would.