Mealworms ?

[randymyr]

I bought some mealworms for my geckos yesterday, and they've been having a fun time gobbling them right up.
now i'm wondering, if the geckos like mealworms, why wouldn't fish?
Are fish able to eat them? (as long as they're big enough)

 

[invader]

Mealworms are usually fed to arowanas, so I don't see why you wouldn't try and give it to other fish as well. The only thing I would worry about is the hard exoskeleton on the mealies, so I would make sure the fish you are feeding it to can digest and bite through that hard exterior.

 

[randymyr]

well, i got bored and decided to try it on my convict cichlid as i waited
and no problem
she gobbled it right up!
she even took seconds

 

[always4lora]

saw these in morrisons today and kinda thought the same, although it had a picture of what looked like a bird on the front so gave it a miss.

 

[shroob]

Depends on the fish you have, but mealworms can form part of a varied diet to many fish.

 

[lokkochaa]

Depends on the fish you have, but mealworms can form part of a varied diet to many fish.

I agree, when i had my bearded dragon, i set up a cultivation community and had LOADS of them, my fish used to love them!!! Remember a lot of fish eat bugs and flies etc which also have a hard exoskeleton

 

[england]

I feed dried meal worms<large tub brought from wilkinson<there ment to feed garden birds and are 100% natural> to all my fish and they love them, even my 2inch polleni and chocolate cichlids go round with them stuck out there gobs,,
This is all my snakeheads will eat, they have turned there nose's up at anything else i put in for them, there colour is great and they grown lots so i guess its doing the job....i do try other things but they are having none of it.....

 

[randymyr]

Sweet
so i'll start feeding them mealworms for now on (including what i fed before)
I'm thinking of buying a leaffish, and i was wondering if these would make good food for them

 

[simonas]

saw mealworms mentioned in Nellys snakehead thread and now think I'll pick some up nexttime I am wilkos.

Maybe my pulchra will dowhat Nellys ornatapinnis are doing!!!

 

[england]

What i did to get my ornatpinnis breeding was i played some barry white,candle light, cooked mealworms laced with steamed shrimp......Then they retired to the bedroom where they watched a blue movie...............................................................buy the name of blue planet starring david attembrough.....

These meal worms seem to go down a treat with everything i have,,,all oscars/tinfoils/silver sharks/ 2.5inch polleni and 2.5inch chocolate cichlid...all relish them,

 

[randymyr]

so would you recommend them as more of a treat, or a staple food?

 

[cane76]

arowana seem to do fine on mealworm as a staple
you can also gut load the worms with all sorts of fruit and veg to pass on to your fish
the only thing is they contain a lot of fat im told

 

[shroob]

I'd go with a pellet as a staple food where possible, they have the nutrients/vitamins in for a balanced diet. As Cane says you can gutload mealworms (and other foods) which make them more nutritious than simply throwing them in, but if your fish are happy with a good pellet as a staple then I see no reason to change.

 

[nmonks]

Mealworms are an acceptable adjunct to the diet of predatory fish, but they shouldn't be used too much. The main problem with mealworms is that the nutritionally incomplete. Unlike a good quality flake or pellet food, they don't have all the vitamins and calcium predatory fish need. When used to feed reptiles, they are always gut-loaded for a couple of days and then dusted with calcium powder (at least by responsible reptile keepers). There's a good explanation of the use of mealworms at the Drs Foster and Smith web site, here.

Another issue with mealworms is that they are incredibly high in fat, with about 15% of their mass being fat.* This is way too high for most fish. It is now recognised that excessive fat levels cause problems for both marine and freshwater fish, and post-mortems reveal that among other things the fat accumulates around the internal organs. This is probably even more serious for omnivorous and herbivorous fish than it is for predatory fish, and I cannot stress strongly enough that fatty foods should be used very sparingly to feed non-predatory fish. For example, I've been told by one scientist examining (naturally wood-eating) Panaque catfish that almost all the prematurely dead specimens he is given by aquarists have these fatty deposits around their organs. Bob Fenner has described something similar from large numbers of dead lionfish that had been fed goldfish, which are also fatty, so there's probably a close relationship between fat and mortality.

In short, while you might use them once in a while to feed predatory fish, they shouldn't be a staple food item. Offered once a week might be fine, but otherwise use a good quality pellet or flake food, or else safer live foods such as earthworms, snails or river shrimp. Wild oscars for example feed extensively on snails and crayfish, but never on goldfish, so why do people insist on giving them feeder fish?

Personally, I wouldn't use mealworms at all to feed anything omnivorous or herbivorous. With those fish, it's the green foods that make a difference between good health and poor health.

Cheers, Neale

*Waxworms contain even more.