Anybody try mealworms for your fish?

[Stan510]

I was at the animal feed store and saw a pound of dead mealworms in a package for only $10. If chopped up would they be a good fish food? Or too oily and hard?

 

[CaptainBarnicles]

No idea following...

 

[Back in the fold]

I've heard both good and bad about mealworms. I don't exactly get the arguments against them . With lizards it's that they gang up in their gut whatever that means. Big fish should wolf them down like hyenas. I watched a show on TV about an outfit that was raising them for human food. You decide about that.

 

[Colin_T]

Most fish won't eat them due to the size and hard body. If you get the ones that have just molted, they are softer and big fish like adult Oscar cichlids might eat them.

You can culture mealworms at home in a plastic storage container partly filled with bran (cereal that you eat). You can feed the mealworms on slices of fruit and vegetables.

Weevil moths and larvae are a better food for smaller fish, especially things like rainbowfish. Just have a plastic storage container or rubbish bin half filled with flour (you can use wheat, corn or any sort of flour made from grains). Leave the lid off for a month and then put it on but don't have it airtight. The flour will attract weevil moths who lay their eggs in the flour. The larvae hatch and grow. You use a sieve to sift the flour and put the larvae into the tank for the fish.

You can culture fruit flies (with or without wings).
Ants can be cultured indoors in ant farms or go dig them up outside.
There are numerous types of small earth worms that can be cultured.

 

[Herpin Man]

I regularly feed superworms (a larger relative of the meal worm) to my native fish, and they eat them well. The exoskeleton contains a lot of chitin, and can be hard to digest, so I feed freshly moulted worms when I can.

 

[Byron]

As others have mentioned, mealworms are not a good diet for most fish, but could be a once-a-week treat for very large fish. I fed them to my Pantodon buchholzi once every two weeks, but this fish has an enormous mouth. I fed the beetles more often than the worm stage. If you culture mealworms, you get beetles periodically. Mealworms will quickly multiply way past what you could ever use.

Edited to correct "meanworms" to "mealworms."

 

[Slaphppy7]

Meanworms will quickly multiply way past what you could ever use.

This is why I'm only interested in breeding Niceworms.

 

[Stan510]

ok...ha,What are "niceworms"? Tubifex?

 

[AbbeysDad]

ok...ha,What are "niceworms"? Tubifex?

I culture white worms....and here's a deep dive into Live Food cultures.

 

[jaylach]

I've used meal worms for South American Cichlids and Rope Fish but only live worms. You can control the population easily by putting in your fridge when too many develop as they will go dormant but stay alive.

Rope Fish love the things as do, at least, Blue and Yellow Acara. Actually had to feed Rope Fish by hand as the Cichlids would get the worms before the Rope had a chance.