Blackworms

[chibi]

I bought an ounce of blackworms for my pufferfish, and they REEK. They smell SOOOO bad. How can I not make them smell so bad?

 

[ArauraDiscus]

Make them dissapear, by feeding them to the fish.

 

[chibi]

I don't want to overfeed them, though. They are mostly for my dwarf puffers. How much should I feed them? I've only been giving them a little bit.

 

[Lynda B]

Is it their natural smell or is it a bad batch.... we just got a batch of bad live bloodworms from our lfs 2 weeks ago and it spread nasty bacteria through 2 of our 3 tanks.....

 

[Tolak]

I've been using locally caught blackworms for a while now. Put them in a container where they will have a lot of surface area, rinse & dump the old water, straight cold tap water is fine. I use a shoebox size container for 1/2 pound, and dump the old water & rinse daily. Keep them in the fridge, covered with about 1/4" of water. No filtration or aeration is needed, nor is dechlorinator needed in the water.

You do need to rinse them a few times when you first get them, they get really rank smelling.

 

[chibi]

Thanks, Tolak! That helped a lot. The guy at the LFS said to keep it somewhere cool and moist. My mom is opposed to keeping them in the fridge, so I'm keeping them down here in my basement. It's about 65 degrees down here. I hope that won't be too much of a problem.

 

[Tolak]

I keep mine in the fridge because I get them in every other week. If you feed them within a few days they should be fine in the basement, as long as you change out the water. If you put the container on a concrete basement floor it will stay cooler than the air temperature.

I have a second fridge in the basement where my wife lets me keep fish food. It's mainly used for the freezer, the fridge only gets non-fish items if we have leftovers from a party, this is usually during the holidays.

The family knows not to mess with the plastic shoebox, or the sour cream container with a 2002 expiration date. The sour cream container has the bbs I hatch daily.

Don't try freezing blackworms, I've heard they go bad, and end up killing fish.