Breeding Red Worms for your fish

Just a quick update, worms are really doing great they have started breeding so much I now have 3 2liter tubs filled with worms now happily munch away on my kitchen waste, I feed them green peas, tea bags and whatever other degradable kitchen waste I produce.

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I took a picture of one of the tubs that the worms are currently breeding in showing you what worm eggs look like:

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Do they breed fast? Nice food for Oscars.

 

It takes 32 days for the eggs to hatch and about 8 weeks before they can breed and become mature. But when you take into account I only feed it to him twice a week the rate at which they breed is faster then the rate I am feeding them. I will take a video when i feed my Oscar as soon as he sees the worm through the tank glass he goes absolutely nuts for them!

 

Something Prof Dirk mentioned: quote-

"as long as they are not feed on vegetable waste from any vegetable store in SA as there are too high levels of pesticides in SA in the veg"

Please take this into consideration when feeding these worms to you fish.

 

If it is safe for human consumption it is more than safe for fish to feed on, I have been feeding him worms since he was tiny and I had to chop it up because he was to scared to come close to them and he is growing like a weed now. I will even go as far as to eat them nothing wrong with a bit of protein and ground in my diet. I breed them so I know exactly what goes into them so no danger in feeding them to my fish, and I have done proper research on the subject matter before even considering it.

So feeding him this worms is just about as safe as feeding him Ox heart or Bloodworms bought at the LPS, that is my humble opinion anyway.

 

I would be careful making a blanket statement like this Larch. Your body has the ability to process the pesticides and gunk that get's put into our food. Your fish does not have this ability. Yes your fish may be living, and appear healthy... but you may find that the long term effect of these pesticides could shorten the lifespan of the fish, or make it less able to fish off disease when it does strike.
Just because the fish looks happy, and has been eating these worms for a while, does not mean it is healthy for the fish.

When I come visit you one day I'm gonna throw in a few coffee beans into your tank to treat your oscar. It has to be safe for the fish because it's safe for me to consume.

 

If you are feeding cooked (Boiled) waste, the chances of it having pesticides still on it is very low.

I don't eat apples anymore because of the unknown chemical film on the apple.

The comment about the coffee beans....not the best example. If Larch knows where his waste is coming from and knows what he is feeding them then I see no problem.

Anyway, as far as I can tell, the red worms are eating what he is feeding them. If there where a significant amount of pesticide or even traces of it...you wont find them alive.

 

Not exactly the same thing there Zoom.

I understand where you getting a though. Chocolates, us humans enjoy. For dogs.....death.
Now I don't know exactly why but just know its poisonous to them.

But if worms were so bad for fish, why is it then allowed to fish with worms as bait if it is indeed endangering the environment? Surely that would be illegal?

I am very interested as what curious of this subject as i have been told to feed my eel worms. It by any chance isnt harmfull to an eel his tank mates will eat his left over (If any)

 

Unfortunately your body does not and cannot process pesticides in most cases stuff like DDT for example (which is now banned) was a good example of this hence people who got exposed to it still suffer from its affects :

"If your body can't metabolize all the pesticides taken in at once, it stores it in various tissues, organs and fat and then leaks it out slowly over several years"

Source: http://www.holistichelp.net/pesticides.html

But anyway before we go off topic, my worms I am breeding is just as safe as any of the frozen foods you can buy at the local LPS because I know exactly what they are feeding on. And I will gladly take them to the department of agriculture to get analyzed for any pesticide content.

And your more then welcome to give him some coffee beans he will most likely eat it lol!, I have been giving him apple, pineapple, citrus fruit slices and peas when he gets constipated from all the protein and to supplement him with vitamin C to prevent hole in the head.

And in any case I only feed him a single worm twice a week as a treat, it hardly makes up his diet which I try and vary as much as possible.

You are more than welcome to come get some from me if you would like to see what your eel does with them, my Oscar loves them to bits and goes monkey when he sees me dinging for them.

 

So last night I noticed that the worms were trying to climb out the container meaning that its over populated and that they needed more space to live and breed in so I bought x2 of those 20 liter clear containers were you usually store stuff like shoes and tools in. (They have the handy clip on lids) Used my trusty old drill and drilled a couple of holes in the lid to allow for proper ventilation, if the container has no lid the worms will climb out at night.

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Regards
Barney The Dinosaur

 

Those worms wont like the light

 

Worms have no issue with light natural or man made,they are ground borrowing creatures so it does not affect them, only time it does is when it raised the ground temperatures to high levels which causes them to die. I regularly leave them in the sun so it can raise the ground temperature just a bit making them more active and making them feed more. And when the ground is warm the speed at which all the kitchen waste rots improves though it gives off a nasty smell.

And the light you are seeing is from the flash of the camera.

 

Translucent Container . . . .I did not take time to analyze the photograph.

 

i lol`ed

 

Are you draining off the worm t\pee?

 

Like I have stated before sunlight does not affect earthworms only when they are exposed to it with no moist places to hide do it become a danger because they breath through there skin so when it becomes dry they die.

^5 Ahahah

Worms dont create waste like other animals they basically eat the ground and excrete it refined and it is highly nutritional for plants. The worms basically started "climbing" out because it was over populated, the ph of my ground is neutral and the temperature is correct the ground is also sufficiently aired. Also I dont have any parasite issues hence my believe it was due to overpopulating and now that I transplanted them they dont climb out anymore.

 

Grammatically correctly speaking, the leachate needs to be drained off. It's why you have compartments and a tap at the bottom of those wriggler bins. Red wrigglers will come to surface and try to escape if soil is too wet.

 

Ahaha okay was trying to figure out what you were saying. Leachate only becomes a problem when the soil is too damp which is not a issue with me (So Far) because I have added horse hay too avoid too much moisture. And currently my breeding scale is very small in comparison to the wriggler bins that you are referring too. And I doubt I will ever go that big anyway as I only have a single fish that feeds off these worms, I might have to start giving them away to fellow fishkeepers if it goes on like this lol!

 

Hi All

My mom has these guys in her kitchen. She uses the leachate to feed her pot plants.

Cheers Vince

 

Just some research I've been doing.

Source : http://www.ehow.com/how-does_5214759_do-earthworms-respond-light_.html

Source: http://www.allaboutworms.com/why-worms-hate-light-and-heat

Regards

TM​