Dried Bloodworms Coming Back To Life

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Kameha123

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My pond fish had babies. We removed the babies from the parent fish and placed them in an aquarium to watch them grow. After researching the subject, we decided to feed our fry a ground up mix of flakes, pellets, dehydrated Brine Shrimp and dehydrated Bloodworms. They are doing well on this as are our adults and yearlings outside.

We found live bloodworms in the aquarium. We figure maybe there were eggs in the mix just waiting to hatch. After researching them, I found that their bite is toxic and as full grown adult bloodworms, their bite can even hurt a person. We needed to remove them as quickly as possible because our fry are less then a cm long, and the bloodworms are already almost that big. We used a turkey baster to remove them from the tank. That works well. Its also useful for removing the babies that didn't survive, and mosquito larvae.

There are probably more Bloodworms in our big ponds out back. There is a base of leaves and muck in the bottom of the pond that we don't want to remove just yet because we have more fry out there that hatched from somewhere other then where the eggs were that we were able to find and remove. The muck base is the perfect environment for these worms to grow to adulthood. I guess that's the catch. We won't clean ot our pond and risk our babies, but the worms are putting the babies at risk.

We are taking the remainder of the dried bloodworms back to the petstore we bought them from and exchanging them for more shrimp. My fishies LOVE it and their colors are more vibrant everyday.

I posted earlier about how do I get them out of my tank.. But, since we figured out a safe way to do so, I am editing my post.
 
FYI, there is no way on earth that the freeze-dried bloodworms are "coming back to life". returning the worms won't solve your problem because the "contamination" is coming from a different source.
 
:S The freeze dried bloodworm definatly wont be 'coming back to life' and I wouldnt have thought there'd be eggs that would hatch, but I cant say I've read that much into bloodworms!
They shouldnt be dangerous to fry, I dont think they are hunters, they just burrow through all the crap on the bottom of the pond/tank and eat stuff. The adult form of bloodworm is a mosquito so wouldnt be anywhere near they fry/fish/water except when they are laying their eggs in there.
You dont need to clear your pond out, they would all just reappear a few days later anyway. Maybe you have mosquitos coming in and laying eggs in your tank? or maybe a batch of eggs got in with the fry on a net or something?

Heres a good little link about them http://www.naturegrid.org.uk/biodiversity/invert/midges.html
 
Thank you! I think that you are right about them being mosquitoes. I've had auuariums since I was a kid and had never encountered this before. We had also never fed bloodworms before. It seemed logical to me, since the larvae we small and red and looked like the hydrated version of what we were feeding.
We took one out today and put it under the microscope.. It is forming wings and little hairs on its head. So I do believe that they are mosquitoes. I had looked mosquitoe larvae up first, before bloodworms, but in the pictures they didn't appear the bright red that these nasty little buggers are. However, now that I have seen it under magnification, at this stage, I do most definetly think that it it a mosquito.
I had seen another mosquito larvae, one further developed, It looked like the pictures I had found.

Anyway, I was wrong. It seemed logical to me at the time.

Thank you again. I like the link you sent me.

--Amy
 

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