Live Blackworm keeper

[Paul B]

I have always fed my fish live blackworms and consider them to be the best possable food for fish, especially to get them into spawning condition. These should not be the only things fed or your fish will eat nothing else.
They are also the Ideal food for copperband and longnose butterflies.
I have gotten many different types of fish to spawn by feeding these.
Most people keep them in the refrigerator and you can unless you are married to my wife.
I have found that by keeping them in shallow water with current, they live for many weeks and can be fed to keep them healthy.
I have had many designs to keep them but this one has been working for a couple of years and I never lose a worm.
The shallow 12" tray (found in a supermarket for $2.00) has two tubes coming out of the bottom. Their is an air line in the larger, left tube. The water goes down the right tube and enters the left tube where it goes back up and flows across the worms.
There is a few pieces of window screen formed into a loop with a gluegun. The worms love window screen and hang out on it. I swirl the screens in some fresh water to remove the worms.
Simple.

 

[dzeadow]

neat little set up Paul! Where do you get black worms from? I've never heard of feeding them. But if you're getting fish to spawn from giving them these black worms, they must have great nutritional value!

 

[stugray]

Very cool!

Do you get the worms live or do you raise them?

That contraption looks like you could mount it as a HOB or Hang in tank, then you could just flush the worms out using a timer or something.

Stu

 

[Paul B]

Stu the worms are in freshwater, salt kills them in 10 seconds.
Danny, Live blackworms are very common on the counter of any pet shop in NY. I do understand they are not available in other parts of the country. I have been buying them since the sixtees. You can get them on line but you have to buy a lot of them.
Worms are the best thing you can feed to fish because you are feeding the entire animal with it's internal organs. Worms, even freshwater worms are high in Omega 3 oils essential to fish.
Most freshwater animals are not good to feed to saltwater fish, worms are the exception. I get most of my gobies to spawn using these worms and I have bred clowns, blue devils, dominoes, and Bangai cardinals using them.
The worms arwe cheap and maybe you can get your LFS to carry them. They sell for about $1.50 a portion which is a clump of them as large as a ping pong ball. That lasts me a week or two as I don't feed too many at a time.
A small fish like a clown gobi can get by with one worm a day

 

[96p993]

Paul what else are you feeding your fish (especially the spawning ones) that keep them not so addicted to the worms?

 

[Paul B]

96p993, I feed them what everyone else feeds them, mysis, Baby brine, clams, things I collect and an assortment of commercially frozen foods.
But they gert a few live worms almost every day. I feed the other foods before I feed the worms. I know the Bangai Cardinals get addicted to worms and don't want anything else. I once lost my male cardinal like that, he only wanted worms and I don't keep enough worms to feed just that.
I feed all my fish with a baster looking thing that I made. I never just dump food in the tank. If I did many of the smaller shier gobies would never get anything to eat. I have to shoot a few worms in the caves where I know some fish are living. First I feed some worms on one side of the tank to get the faster fish over there.

BIOLOGY FACTS ABOUT BLACKWORMS
Habitat and Ecology: These worms live in muddy sediments, especially in shallow water along the edges of
marshes and ponds throughout the United States, and many other parts of the world.
Body and support: Mudworms usually have 150-250 body segments. They have no skeleton, but the fluid
inside them gives them support and form.
Reproduction and Development: Like earthworms, each mudworm has both male and female sex
organs, but sexual reproduction is uncommon, at least under laboratory conditions. Reproduction is most commonly
by fragmentation. That is, worms simply break apart and each fragment becomes a new worm by growing a new
head and/or tail. This amazing process is called regeneration. What if humans could regenerate fingers, arms, toes
that were cut off?
Feeding and Digestion: Worms eat dead and decaying vegetation such as submerged leaves and wood, as
well as small organisms, such as algae, bacteria, and protozoa. They have a complete digestive tract with a mouth
and anus. Contractions of the intestine are easily seen through the body wall in whole worms.
Respiration: Worms have no lungs or gills. They breathe through their skin. They can use the dorsal surface of
their tail for obtaining oxygen. So, in shallow water, they stick their tail up to the water surface to obtain more
oxygen. But, even when there is little oxygen in the water, worms can still survive for long periods of time.
Circulation: Blood flows in blood vessels and capillaries. Blood is red due to hemoglobin. The dorsal blood
vessel is easily seen in each worm. his vessel pulsates rhythmically, pumping blood throughout the body. Blood
always flows in a forward direction (from tail-to-head) in the dorsal blood vessel.
Nerves, Muscles and Movements: A nerve cord, made up of many nerve cells, is found just below the
intestine, along the entire length of the body. The nerve cord controls the worm’s muscles that, in turn, cause it to
move. Worms use their muscles to crawl through the mud. They get extra traction from bristles that can be projected
from the side of their body. Worms will rapidly pull back their head or tail if it is touched. Worms that hold their tail up
to the water surface may quickly withdraw it if a shadow suddenly occurs. This is because these worms have tiny
simple “eyes” (called photoreceptor cells) scattered along their tail segments! In water, worms can also swim for
short distances by making corkscrew movements with their body.
Classification:
Phylum name: Annelida
Class name: Oligochaeta
Genus and species:

 

[stugray]

Paul B,

"Stu the worms are in freshwater, salt kills them in 10 seconds."

I realize that.

I was just suggesting having a HOB "contraption" exactly like yours that can be set to "flush" into the display every few days, so all you have to do is add worms & food every week or so.



I have also used live black ( & blood ) worms to feed my copperbands.

Some love it & others wont touch it.

Stu

 

[Paul B]

You don't want that worm water going into your tank

 

[tkeracer619]

Paul, can you post pictures of your larger worm keeper? I looked through your threads today and saw a pic of it but it wasn't very detailed. I would like to build one and your design seems to have great success.

 

[Paul B]

This is the only picture I have.
It is just a trough or shallow tray over a tank. The water gets pumped to the left side of the tray by a tiny pump. The pump sits in a small container in the tank that has holes near the top. The container is open. The reason for the pump being in a container is that the worms sink, I want the water to enter the pump a few inches above the bottom of the tank so it does not suck in worms.
I also added a small container of carbon on top of the tray where the water enters from the pump.

 

[hillscp]

Nice. I was keeping mine in the fridge. One day my wife came home with a little mini beer fridge for my office. What a woman

 

[tkeracer619]

Great, thanks Paul! You also said you had made a diy cooler as well for it. Have any info on that or did it not pan out or was unnecessary? Also, if you don't mind. What and how often do you feed them? Any tip would be greatly appreciated. This whole "I never find a dead one" sounds very appealing to me. I travel a lot for work and wouldn't be able to monitor it daily. I would hate to come home after a few days to some brown smelly soup.

 

[Tanks and Stuff]

Paul B is a member of another forum that I'm a member of, and I'm always amazed at the cool inventions he comes up with. He's built not only the worm keeper in this thread, but also the homemade chiller, he makes his own rockwork (out of cement covered objects like bottles, rope, rebar, etc.), a really great live brine shrimp feeder (great for mandarins and bottom feeders), and he even invented the "majano wand" aka the Zapper. He's even made a few awesome halloween costumes... one as the Brooklyn Bridge, complete with working led lights!

But anyway, since you were asking for a pic of his chiller, and he's probably tied up with the big "Perfect Storm" hitting the NJ/NY coast right now, I'll post it up for you.

This was originally posted by Paul on the NJ Reefers forums:

The basic object, from what I remember, is the water gets pumped to the top section, and as it cascades down the acrylic ramps, there's a computer fan (top right) that blows cool air into the container. Then, as you can see, the hole in the bottom dumps the chilled water back into the sump under his worm breeder tray.

 

[tkeracer619]

Very cool! I remembered seeing it somewhere just couldn't find the pic. Thanks.

I hope people are able to stay safe and minimize their losses during this storm. It is terrifying.

 

[kevantheman35]

I would think you would get some serious evaporation but thats a pretty cool idea

 

[Paul B]

I am a little busy with this storm thing right now.

 

[badbreath]

I was inspired by this and made my own

I was inspired by this and made my own

This and a few other of Paul B's threads inspired me to make one of my own. I used a medium sized rubbermaid container for the sump and fat filter pad separating the trough drain and the return pump.

Its been running for a few months now next to the window in my classroom. I put a Y connector and valve in the return line so I can shoot the water out the window when doing water changes.

The filter pad is loaded with worms now, that I hope are reproducing... Being next to the window I am getting a lot of algae growth that I can only assume they are eating.

I buy them a scoop at a time from my lfs for $1...that lasts me about a week. I went over board in my first attempt with this last year...the worms and water went bad fast...I could smell it in the hallway (I didn't have my inline drain at the time...it was a mess!!) SLOW AND STEADY IN THE WAY TO GO.

Thanks for the idea...saved my copperband's life.

 

[Paul B]

I am glad it helped. The worms seem to be filter feeders so I don't thionk they will eat algae but it may help keep the water clean.