Live BlackWorms: Best Fish and LPS Food Ever?

[Paul B]

Matt you are correct, caviar is not all fat as I just looked it up. It seems to be 17.9% if I am reading this correctly.
The rest of it looks like a mixture of water and protein.
But it is the highest fat content food you could find

Nutrition and Calories in Caviar (Black & Red)
Water content (grams per 100g) 47.5
Calorie content of Food (kcals per 100g/3.5oz) 252
Protein content (grams per 100g) 24.6
Fat content (lipids) (grams per 100g) 17.9
Ash content (grams per 100g) 6.5
Carbohydrate content (grams per 100g) 4
Dietary Fiber content (grams per 100g) 0
Sugar content (grams per 100g) 0


But look at the fat content of Caviar or fish eggs compared to Cod fish

Nutrition and Calories in Atlantic Cod (Raw)
Water content (grams per 100g) 81.22
Calorie content of Food (kcals per 100g/3.5oz) 82
Protein content (grams per 100g) 17.81
Fat content (lipids) (grams per 100g) 0.67
Ash content (grams per 100g) 1.16
Carbohydrate content (grams per 100g) 0
Dietary Fiber content (grams per 100g) 0
Sugar content (grams per 100g) 0

Or clams

Nutrition and Calories in Clam (Cooked, Moist Heat)
Water content (grams per 100g) 63.64
Calorie content of Food (kcals per 100g/3.5oz) 148
Protein content (grams per 100g) 25.55
Fat content (lipids) (grams per 100g) 1.95
Ash content (grams per 100g) 3.74
Carbohydrate content (grams per 100g) 5.13
Dietary Fiber content (grams per 100g) 0
Sugar content (grams per 100g) N/A

Fish eggs have almost 20 times the fat as clams or cod fish. You would be hard pressed to find a food with a higher fat content. Fish eggs also have almost 3 times the calcium of bass. I could not find the fat content of worms.
Fish eggs seem to be the food with the highest content of fat that I could find unless you eat butter or just oil.
So If I am reading this correctly, you would have to feed about nine ounces of clams to have the same amount of fat as one ounce of fish eggs, and something like 25 ounces of cod fish to equal the amount of fat in fish eggs. Some math wizzard can correct my math as I did this in my head.
But am I correct in this? If I am than a fish would get much more fat by eating fish eggs than almost anything else that could be fed.
My theory (and again, only mine) is that a fish in nature eats a lot of fat (as oil because fish have oil not solid fat), As I said just one pregnant fish is loaded with fatty eggs and a carnavore eats these things all day, every day. If they eat it in the sea, they should eat in in captivity.
The frozen stuff we buy commercially does not have nearly the fat content of what a fish in the sea eats.
Yes, it is true that Codfish is a cold water fish, I am not sure of the fat content of tropical fish but I am fairly sure their eggs are full of fat (or oil) as that is what eggs are, little packages of fat to supply energy to a developing fish. Fat carries more calories and therefore energy than other foods, much more, dozens of times more.

The most tropical fish I could find the fat content of was dolphin, and it has more fat than cold water codfish

Nutrition and Calories in Dolphin fish (Cooked, Dry Heat)
Water content (grams per 100g) 71.22
Calorie content of Food (kcals per 100g/3.5oz) 109
Protein content (grams per 100g) 23.72
Fat content (lipids) (grams per 100g) 0.9
Ash content (grams per 100g) 2.69
Carbohydrate content (grams per 100g) 0
Dietary Fiber content (grams per 100g) 0
Sugar content (grams per 100g) N/A

This is an interesting site, you can look up the nutrition of other foods here also

http://www.calorie-counter.net/calories-in-fish-seafood.htm

According to this site fish eggs have 1,890 units of vitamin A to bass which has 115 and clams have 92

fish eggs have 275 calcium to bass with 103 and clams with 171 of calcium.
Fish eggs are just full of everything as you can find in the above link.

 

[MatthewAD]

Thanks for the discussion and the link.

I wish I had space or that somewhere closer than 200 miles sold these.

 

[thecichlidpleco]

We use these at work to help rear small Lake Sturgeon to start eating live foods. They are kept in a walk in fridge, in a 5 gallon bucket. Inside they are in a small clear plastic container filled about a 1/3 with water and another container fits inside with a screen that lets the water just touch the screen. Basically keeps the worms moist, but not swimming. I will get a pic up of the container and see if I can find where we bought it. Havent thought of using it on saltwater, but I might start at only $2 a scoop at the LFS.

 

[Jacob D]

(with regard to my question about fat content of cyclops vs. mysis vs. blackworms)...

Jacob,

Yes and no and we're not sure. Here at work we feed a lot of cyclops to the big reef tank, mostly to make sure the garden eels get enough food, and there are many fish that are 'fat' looking. Not the full body fat, but with fat guts. On necropsy, many fish, fat or thin, have fatty livers. It is suspected that CE may be responsible if its over consumed. I think it comes down to basic well rounded diets - eating anything too much can produce bad effects, and its easy to think that a food with 34% fat could have bad effects if it was the only food eaten long term. As mentioned earlier, marine tropicals readily eat brine shrimp, but its not a good long term food source - specially if not gut loaded correctly/well.

Earlier in the thread people were asking about the nutritional value of goldfish, so here is a link to a two part article by Rob Toonen that goes into it. This was posted earlier, but seems to have been missed:

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/dec2003/invert.htm
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/jan2004/invert.htm

I think there is a lot to consider regarding CBW as a 'fantastic' food source. It seems to me that fish oil is different between cold water fish and tropical fish (human fish oil supplements come from cold water fish), so generically saying that oil in worms is good for fish seems difficult to support without further study. People have been feeding marine tropicals CBW since I started in the hobby in the 80's, so this idea is not new, but it has never really gained traction because there is a lack of data, and I suppose because of the idea, right or wrong, that terrestrial/freshwater foods aren't the best for saltwater animals. I am not sure how I stand on looking at spawning as an indication that CBW are a great food. I would suspect that CBW are a good sometimes food or good for getting difficult eaters to eat (if they will take it). As an all the time food, I would urge caution, just like I would for any other food.

Hey Jacob, I'll try and answer your question as best I can with the caveat that I am not a fish nutritionist (as you know!). In short, all fat is not created equal.

I'll take your word for it that that's an accurate number for Cyclops-eeze. I think what is just as important to consider as the total fat content is the percentage of the fat that is saturated vs. polyunsaturated. I don't have any numbers sitting in front of me for these ratios in blackworms, but I would bet a stack of money that the amount of saturated fat content in blackworms is very high, and that they are very low in polyunsaturated fat.

Here's a quote from Rob Toonen's article on nutrition from Advanced Aquarist.

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/dec2003/invert.htm



I would not suggest feeding large amounts of Cyclop-eeze or mysis as a staple part of the diet either. Both are pretty fatty, and of course mysis has issues with shutting down your skimmer. I consider both to be a concentrated source of HUFAs, and for Cyclop-eeze a good source of astaxanthin, and both of these are of course good to get into your fish on a sparse but regular basis. Fish fed solely PE mysis can get obese and get fatty liver too. If you're going to feed these foods, I'd suggest also including a large amount of foods very low in fat like squid, shrimp, and clam in your fish's diet.

Rich, Matt,

Thanks for your thoughts. I missed your responses until now. When it comes to what I put into my own body I'm on top of things fairly well. I'm aware of saturated and polyunsaturated fats, fatty acids, five dollar foot longs, etc

I'd agree that a varied diet is best for most fish, and without knowing exactly the nutritional profile of a food it's probably best to use in moderation. I based my info on the cyclops on what is provided by the "manufacturer"...

there is quite a bit of published data here for anyone interested...
http://www.cyclop-eeze.com/product_info/10-11.html

I also agree that LBW are an excellent food to get fish eating. I am using them all the time now with fish in QT, especially once I start Prazi and their appetites are suppressed. They still take the LBW readily. Usually once I have them eating worms it's not difficult to get them to eat other foods.


The one thing that I do find interesting is the spawning behavior. I had it happen in my own tank with a relatively new pair of flame angels. The entire time I owned them, even through QT, they were not a true pair. The male constantly showed aggression toward the female. Not long after I started feeding LBW... spawning. I owned the fish probably less than 6 months before I had a family emergency which lead to loss of most of my livestock. I think that (some) other people have noticed that too is more than coincidence, and although I can't prove anything I believe there is something more to be discovered here.

I would like to know more about LBW and I'm glad that this conversation has taken a turn toward nutrition in general because it has me taking a harder look at the overall diet I'm providing my fish now. I'm going to read the Toonen article next...


p.s. If you guys are ever pulling a late shift at the aquarium drop me a line and I'll show up with some brews then we can continue the discussion

 

[Jacob D]

Fish eggs seem to be the food with the highest content of fat that I could find unless you eat butter or just oil.

I'm trying to put on a few pounds for winter and on this diet now plus brewski's... will advise in a few months.

 

[Paul B]

Jacob, you are a little skinny :wavehand:

 

[Jacob D]

Yep I'm definitely a piece of lean mass. Somewhere I went wrong between eating right, being active, and having a fast metabolism.


I was thinking this morning that LBW account for probably 20% of my fish diet right now. How about the rest of you guys?

 

[ezhoops]

Deathwish 03: something must be wrong if your a penguins fan from MI :uzi::uzi:

 

[snorvich]

Yep I'm definitely a piece of lean mass. Somewhere I went wrong between eating right, being active, and having a fast metabolism.


I was thinking this morning that LBW account for probably 20% of my fish diet right now. How about the rest of you guys?

Well, of the clams, mysis, PE and mysis, Hikari the additional blackworms is less than 20% by buik. I feed them to every tank once per day. Largest bulk is probably clams in the shell.

 

[Outerbank]

I appreciate all the discussion in this thread. I have learned a lot and hope to add LBW to my fish's diet. I suspect my fish will be healthier if I do. PaulB has a lot of experience and interesting points. I am grateful that he shares his experience and knowledge on this forum.

There has been discussion regarding LBWs and fish breeding. My neon goby pair is breeding and my 17 year old clowns have been breeding for 16 years. With that said, the egg mass from the clowns has diminished to about 25-50% of the eggmass from when they were young. I am interested to see if their eggmass improves with the addition of LBW.

My old days of biochemistry study tell me there is a reason fat and oil is present in liver. This is because the liver makes fats and oils from protein and carbohydrates http://www.vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/digestion/liver/metabolic.html
We don't need to eat fat to have adipose tissue, fat, and oil in our body. We will make these from other things we eat. However, this does not mean there is no benefit from consuming the proper fats and oils in our diet.

 

[Outerbank]

Matt you are correct, caviar is not all fat as I just looked it up. It seems to be 17.9% if I am reading this correctly.
The rest of it looks like a mixture of water and protein.
But it is the highest fat content food you could find

Nutrition and Calories in Caviar (Black & Red)
Water content (grams per 100g) 47.5
Calorie content of Food (kcals per 100g/3.5oz) 252
Protein content (grams per 100g) 24.6
Fat content (lipids) (grams per 100g) 17.9
Ash content (grams per 100g) 6.5
Carbohydrate content (grams per 100g) 4
Dietary Fiber content (grams per 100g) 0
Sugar content (grams per 100g) 0

Paul, thanks for the info. If you ignore water content, eggs become close to 35% fat.

 

[jlinzmaier]

Well, I am trying something new to maintain a larger volume of blackworms longer (in theory in perpetuity) and fater in the refrigerator without a keeper like Paul's. I purchased 1/4 lb of worms which I am keeping in an uncovered glass pyrex baking dish in the refrigerator in about 1/4 to 1/2 inch of water. The glass dish is great b/c there is no way the worms could ever crawl out since they cannot gain traction on the glass and have several inches of glass to climb above them. I am draining out all the water (about 8 ounces), replacing it with clean water, and puting the dish back in the refrigerator daily. Several times a week I also take the worms out of the refrigerator and bring the water to room temperature. I then feed the worms NLS pellets. I feed them sparingly so that just a few pellets are fed in all areas of the dish so as to avoid fouling the water. I leave the worms to feast on the pellets for several hours outside the refrigerator. I then change out all the water with fresh water and replace the dish with new water back in the refrigerator. Therefore, I change the all the water of the dish everyday and twice a day several times a week when I feed the worms. So far so good, and no problems. I hope to maintain larger volumes of the worms for longer periods of time and keep the worms plump in the refrigerator this way. If this works, I expect to maintain my 1/4 lb of worms in the refrigerator for several months and also aim to keep them plump for this entire period. Without feeding them in this way, I was only able to keep the worms in the refrigerator for at most 1 month, and they became very thin at the end of this period. Also, for anyone who thinks that this involves a lot of work to maintian the worms, I can change the water from the dish in less than 1 minute so I spend very little time doing this. I would think also that feeding the worms NLS pellets certainly would not hurt and could only improve their nutritional profile.

I happen to think this is a very clever idea.

What is unknown (at least not discussed yet) is that if the BW's can come out of their slowed metabolic state (from the fridge) and consume enough food in a couple hours to regain any nutritional value. Also, I wonder how long it would take the BW's to properly digest the food to the degree in which it's actually converted to BW tissue/oil/blood/etc. Putting them back in the fridge after the food is eaten doesn't mean that it's metabolized and has nourished the BW's. I would suspect that putting them back in the fridge with a full gut will slow the digestion of the food and may lead to lack of uptake of the nutrients into the BW's body.

Even if you're just gut loading them and not allowing them to metabolize the food, then at the very least you could gut load them with something of high quality like NLS pellets. If the food is just sitting in the gut and it isn't digested by the BW then at least it would be taken in and digested by the animal eating the blackworms. This may be a clever way to get finicky fish to get the nutritional value of some quality pellet food - just let a live critter eat the high quality pellets and feed that live critter to the animals that will only eat live critters (until they can be weaned off live food). The same concept could be done with ghost shrimp but the advantage of using blackworms is that it sounds like you can put them in a semi-dormant state with the cool temp of the fridge thus prolonging the digestion of the food they eat which means that the nutritional value of the gut full of undigested high quality food will directly transfer to the fish or other animal eating it.

Maybe this concept would be good "food for thought" for those who are skeptical about feeding BW's because of their fat content. Let them get skinny (theoretically decreasing the fat content of the worm itself) then gut load it with high quality food. You get a live animal that fish will accept much more readily than the pellets, but at the same time you're not feeding big fat blackworms which would have a high fat content. Only theoretical, but a sound theory as best I can determine. Of course, all of this is based on the BW's rate of metabolization after they eat the food and how much the gastric metabolization of food is slowed when placed back into a semi-dormant state.

I'm certainly going to try this method of BW keeping and see what sort of results I get.



Paul B.

Love your input! Your friendliness and willingness to debate without a hint of animmosity is something that very few people posess in todays society(unfortunately:sad2.

Could you elaborate a bit on how you worm keeper is designed?? I've seen the pics. Is there some baffling incoorporated or are there just coincidental items in the "worm track" to allow the worms to bunch up against, hold down paper, or improve the level of washing the worms get??

I'd very much like to set up a keeper like yours to see if I can get enough of them proliferating to limit the cost of buying new worms every couple weeks.

Jeremy

 

[Paul B]

Love your input! Your friendliness and willingness to debate without a hint of animmosity is

Jeremy, first of all, thank you. As for the lack of animmosity, I am a combat Vet and lost all of my animmosity a long time ago in a distant place. The rest of my life is going to be easy. There is no way I can think of that anyone could get me agrivated on a fish site. I mean, we are talking about a fish "hobby". Being a hobby means that it is supposed to be fun and not really important. None of here actually "need" fish so why would anyone get mad over it?
Many people don't agree with me. They are correct to not agree with me as I am not the God of fish or Blackworms. As time passes much of this information will be found to be incorrect.

The secret to my wormkeeper is that it needs to cycle. The worms will not live in it for about two weeks. After that time there will be a coating of bacterial slime on the sides of the container and that will purify the water. When the thing is new, it will have to be rinsed twice a day as the water will cloud up due to lack of bacteria. In the small tank below the trough I have some egg crate to give the bacteria more real estate.
Some worms make it to the tank where they first go into a plastic container which overflows into the tank. The worms that go into the container, I suck up every day and replace into the trough or feed them to my tank. The water must be shallow as possable and move slightly. If it moves too fast, all the worms will get into the tank. In the trough I have a few barriers glued in and the worms congregate behind those. I also have some rings of PVC window screen in there to contain them. I feed small 1"X1" pieces of paper towel of brown paper. If you put in too much paper, you will never get the worms out of the paper. With a small amount of paper, most of the worms will not be able to tangle themselves in the paper and you can collect those. Eventually the paper will need to be replaced. I doubt you can gut load worms as they subsist on the products of decomposition of the paper.
The worms re produce by breaking off sections and you will find tiny worms all over the place but they grow too slow and I need to buy them all the time.
Don't add dead worms or it will crash the thing in no time. You can only add healthy worms to this. You can change the water every week but never clean anything in there.
Good luck

 

[snorvich]

I change the water weekly but did the original cycle with pond bacteria which are fresh water. Everything seems to live and be happy in mine. However I do NOT keep them chilled, but rather at 72F. They do seem to have a very sensitive feeling for gravity as they migrate to the right hand side of my keeper. I keep moving them back, but they persist. I feed them brown paper until they are removed for consumption but I cannot say if they are reproducing as I have not asked them that question.

 

[Paul B]

but I cannot say if they are reproducing as I have not asked them that question.

Do you see any of them smoking cigarettes? :lol2:

 

[jlinzmaier]

I wonder if a product as simple as cycle would help get the worm keeper "cycled" faster. I believe the product is appropriate for FW or SW and I've got plenty of samples lying around as give aways from recent frag swaps.

Tomorrow I'm going to town to get a plastic rain gutter and see what I can come up with for a worm keeper. I thought it looked like you had some baffles in there Paul and I think I'll try the same concept.

I wonder if an aqualifter pump would work well for this?? I'll give it a try since I've got about three of them lying around not being used.

Sounds like the major hurdle with this concept is keeping the water level shallow enough (and flow low enough) while keeping the majority of the worms out of the overflow.

Can I ask what the purpose is of having the water level so shallow above the worms?? After so many pages of reading I thought I read somewhere that these worms need the shallow water above them so they can surface for air but can't remember where I read that. Is that right or did I just imagine I read that somewhere??

Jeremy

 

[snorvich]

Do you see any of them smoking cigarettes? :lol2:

They could not buy them without a credit card and unless they are able to steal someone's identity, no smoking for them. But when I turn the light on in their area, they do the "wave".

 

[snorvich]

I wonder if a product as simple as cycle would help get the worm keeper "cycled" faster. I believe the product is appropriate for FW or SW and I've got plenty of samples lying around as give aways from recent frag swaps.

Tomorrow I'm going to town to get a plastic rain gutter and see what I can come up with for a worm keeper. I thought it looked like you had some baffles in there Paul and I think I'll try the same concept.

I wonder if an aqualifter pump would work well for this?? I'll give it a try since I've got about three of them lying around not being used.

Sounds like the major hurdle with this concept is keeping the water level shallow enough (and flow low enough) while keeping the majority of the worms out of the overflow.

Can I ask what the purpose is of having the water level so shallow above the worms?? After so many pages of reading I thought I read somewhere that these worms need the shallow water above them so they can surface for air but can't remember where I read that. Is that right or did I just imagine I read that somewhere??

Jeremy

I use an aqualifter (which works well) and I have 1/2 inch baffles and egg crate through out. They seem to like the egg crate, they go over baffles eventually and end up in the "far side" which is my right hand side. I have their tray ever so slightly tipped to the right side, with about a quarter inch of elevation. They love corners. Now do not read any political meaning into this post. :lmao:

 

[snorvich]

By the way, fish that LOVE them include: leopard wrasses, all butterfly fish, emperor angel but not blue face or scribbled angels, anthias.

 

[Paul B]

But when I turn the light on in their area, they do the "wave".

:lol2:

They can be kept in deeper water but they seem to do better in very shallow water where they can sometimes stick their "heads" out. Maybe they like looking around. I use the smallest pump I could find, it is for a table fountain. It is suspended off the bottom of the tank because the worms sink and it will not suck them up that way. In my set up I also have a small plastic container of carbon that sits where the water from the pump empties into the trough. It seems to also help a little. But the key is cycling, it will not work well at all for at least two weeks.
I used a PVC Home Depot 4" fence post that I sliced in half to make the trough.
The baffles are just pieces of plastic glued in to make it easier for the worms to stay put. Without baffles, all the worms will slide to the lower end and end up in the tank.
I did not just throw this together, this is about the fifth prototype and seems to work the best.