Keep in mind if you have been feeding them and haven’t had any issues, this does not mean I am wrong. Your bloodworms might be coming from a better supplier!
Thoughts on Hikari and San Francisco Bay? Probably most commonly used. Also other frozen foods like Daphnia and BBS? _THANK YOU FOR THE INFO ON BLOODWORMS AND RAMS! NO MORE FROZEN BLOODWORMS!_ this might be my reason for deaths I couldn't get my finger on.
I've had apistogrammas die after eating frozen bloodworms from both Hikari and SFB brands, I'm so thankful for this video now I don't feel so crazy thinking the bloodworms were the issues.
I have found that they constipate my apistogramas and German rams really bad. As far as my angel's, and plecos I haven't had any issues. I only feed Hikari bloodworms though.
Btw greetings from Tampa Florida! You're the best channel when it comes to giving up front advice on keeping fish without all the frills and gimmicks that a lot of other channels plug into their content! I've been a fan of you and your partners for almost 2 years now ever since I stumbled across y'all when I started my journey. Back then I started out with a couple hillstream loach and a mustard gas Betta. Now I have a whole bedroom dedicated to breeding fish with the overflow of grow out tanks taking up more and more of my bedroom. I have stole or should I say borrowed a lot of tricks from you especially on raising my fry.
I want to mention a thing about Bloodworms; Years ago, I used to have a tank of oscars. They were fully mature, and I used to give them frozen bloodworms occasionally as a treat. Maybe once a week. And I used to just plop the frozen 'cube' in the tank and let them go at it. This was fine a few times, but then one time one of them swallowed the frozen clump. Because they are cold-blooded, they can only thaw them at water temperature, so it stayed frozen inside him long enough to actually damage the swim bladder and cause it to fail. All he could do after that was float along the top and look absolutely miserable. I tried to see if he could be healed. He would eat, reluctantly (for an oscar) if I hand-fed him directly. But after a month of hoping he'd pull through, I finally had to euthanize the poor little guy. It was absolutely heartbreaking. Since then, whenever I feed bloodworms, I always thaw them in warm water completely before putting them in the tank.
I just recently had a similar situation but luckily I didn't lose any fish. I just started keeping fish about a year ago and about 3 months ago, I learned about frozen blood worms. I bought a pack and I dropped a two or three cubes in my tank every other day as a treat and a break from flakes & pellets. My fish loved them. After that pack was gone, I went to go buy some more. The store was out of them but I spotted a really cool looking Salvini Cichlid that I just had to have. I bought him, took him home, and put him in my tank. He was a good bit bigger than my other Cichlids and quickly became the tank boss. A few days later, the blood worms were back in stock so I bought another pack and I gave my fish a treat that same day. I was watching all my fish taking turns nibbling on the frozen cubes when all the sudden, the Salvini shot to the top of the water and swallowed the whole cube. My first reaction was "Cool" but then I started thinking "That can't be good". I never even considered bloat but I was more concerned about a frozen block of food in my fish's stomach. I was more afraid that it was painful to him....kind of like humans getting an ice cream headache. That's when I had the idea of dropping the cubes in a bowl of water and thawing them out before feeding them to my fish. This turned out to be better than dropping the entire cube in because more fish get to eat some of the worms. Thankfully, I didn't lose my Salvini to bloat. I hate to hear that you lost yours.
Been feeding frozen blood worm to my fishes for years and have been all well.. Personally, i think it depends on the brand of frozen blood worm used.. Some brands have poor quality blood worm which looks bad and are black in colour..
No issues with Omega One feeding my community tank. Not the only thing they get though. Note, freeze dried to avoid any pathogens! If feeding frozen, absolutely you can run into problems.
@@blaircox1589tbh my fish love them and my crayfish devours them actually prefers them over the minnows i gave him, to the point i’ve had a minnow with him for over a week now im just letting them be together but i use omega one too and my other fish devours them but i still use flakes too but it’s really the only think my crayfish enjoys to eat
i would also like to mention that my young koi fish love them and my molly likes them too, but again i would definitely give them their flakes or pellets too and only every once in awhile i give them the bloodworms i’ve been scared of bloodworms for their main diet because even before i did deep research i’ve know that bloodworms aren’t the more nutritious things for them but my crayfish mainly needs protein in his diet and that’s why i give him bloodworms and the minnow just eats whatever’s left over and then i throw in a small amount of flakes to enhance colors and give them a balanced diet
I'm messaging from Singapore. There are no pig farms here! There was about two which closed 30 years ago! All food is imported as there is no farming due to not enough land. A few chickens are kept for egg laying,thats all.
I used to breed discus I had over 15000 gallon and over 700 discus I fed them nothing but bloodworms but high quality ones only. Always had great success with breeding and never had any die offs
I have run into a couple pretty serious breeders who hold the same opinion of bloodworms as you do. However, through talking out what happened with them I think we have narrowed down the real problem. I have fed literally thousands of pounds of bloodworms (not an exaggeration, thousands of pounds of them) over the past 20 years with zero problems. My theory is that whenever someone has had a problem it had to be one of two things. 1, you bought crap bloodworms just like that article you were reading was stating, although I’ve never seen those available at any store, only through direct ordering from Asia. Or 2, and I think far more likely is that when these people have problems with bloodworms they at some point along the shipping lines (farm to packaging plant, plant to shipper, shipper to wholesaler, wholesaler to local store, and sometimes there are several steps in between, somewhere in there they were thawed out, went rotten, and were refrozen after. Sadly most hood profit above their clients and will 100% refreeze them. Just my two cents, obviously everyone is entitled to their own opinions.
OK blood worm have killed 4 of my fish 3 within a week and I just thought they had a disease or some thing and I haven't put blood worm in my tank for a few weeks and today I put some in and a small molly was being greedy with them and I've just found it dead with half the blood worm sticking out of its mouth ,I'm actually gutted 😢had this fish from a fry and he was doing so well ,so 4 fish dead and all were eating blood worm
high-quality bloodworms are a good supplementary food for species that appreciate extra protein in their diet (bettas, cories, etc.) but, of course, there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to fish. this is an important topic that isn’t often discussed, thank you for this video
I found this video to be extremely helpful, and I'm glad I came across your channel. I am getting back into the freshwater hobby after many years of being out of it. It's interesting because my current bettas actually want nothing to do with blood worms. I won't be feeding them to any of my future cichlids. I agree that the homemade diets can be really nutritious.
Thank you for confirming this for me! I had a Ram die on me the other day after feeding him bloodworms and I didn't know what to make of it. A half hour after feeding the bloodworms, he was at a 45 degree angle gasping at the surface and dead a few hours later. He was part of my perfectly healthy breeding pair that I've been getting a ton of GBR fry out of so it didn't make any sense at all. I've been feeding them bloodworms daily based on Dean's direction to make sure they keep breeding but I think it's costing me fish now. You and Justin definitely have a much better grasp on the fine details of breeding.
I stopped feeding Discus blood worms around 10 years ago and so many issues stopped. I do still feed to my Rams but "VERY SPARINGLY" I caught some blowback on this theory from top breeders. Great information and I feel very important 😀
Fast forward 10 years, im sure technology, resources and methods have vastly improved. Maybe give it a shot again and see if things have improved from 10 years ago
Technology has definitely changed that is exactly why I won't invite those issues for my very expensive fish. The dry foods and other foods are so superior to 10-20 years ago and give all the nutrients the fish need which sometimes are worth 500.00 plus. I don't question Hikari blood worms I think they are very high quality. It's the casings of the worm that get caught in the long digestive tract of these fish which causes stress and sickness. I think as a treat you would be fine but I'm not willing to buy truckloads of medication to treat my Discus and believe we feed this food for the look of the food more than the actual benefits to our Discus. I do feed it to my Rams and catfish to help induce spawning behavior but very minimal and cautiously. Just 1 man's opinion that works for me. Have a wonderful day and thank you for commenting 😊
Some very good points Nick. I think its one of those subjects that requires each person to make an informed decision based on their own experience and the fish they keep. When I started in fish we only had tubefex worms. Now those are hard to find because we've learned a lot about the poor conditions in which they are propagated.
Thabk you for bringing this ti attention!!!! I recently had a terrible experience with bloodworms! My fish were fine for a year (nothing new added to the tank. No new plants, no new fish) and all of a sudden my corydoras got costiosis, otherwise known as ichthyobodosis... and the only thigh different is that I started introducing them to bloodworms... the only fish in my tank that ate bloodworms were corries, and they were the only ones that got sick! I lost 2 of them 😔. One had problem with their gills, and the other one was just eaten alive, which are both symptoms of that disease. At first I thought it was columnaris, cause it looked a lot like it, until I sent one of the dead ones for fish autopsy ( I had to cause I've noticed my other 8 corries were looking odd as well, and I really didn't want to lose them + they were expensive ) and they discovered it was costiosis! Which is pretty bad! So everyone feeding bloodworms, be extra careful!!! Cause eventhough they are frozen, it doesnt affect this bacteria.
Very comprehensive video Nick, nice! I feed bloodworms on occasions twice a month, if I remember. My community tank is mostly fed on frozen brine shrimp with spirulina or live brine shrimp and good quality dry food.
Hey man, I’m an apisto breeder/seller in the US. I can tell you over the last 2 years of breeding for profit that blood worms kill apisto. They don’t have the digestive track to handle the blood worms exoskeleton. I lost some of my best breeders in the beginning due to blood worm bloat.
Bloodworms are a great food in my experience.. i dont give it to my african cichlids but everything else gets it and ive never had an issue.. Though, i do find it interesting that you feed Beef Heart which is a land animal meat.. something they will never come across in the wild.. would def reconsider that in your concoction of homemade fish food :) cheers.
Great video Nick! Guppies and livebearers tend to like them in my experience. I haven't had any problems with them. Thanks for sharing! Happy Lunar New Year! 😄🧧
Mine love them, but occasionally one will die looking like it’s stuffed up inside. So I’ll reduce the frequency from every other day to twice a week and see what happens.
Whoa thanks man. Just started frozen blood worms for my new tank full off angels. And I've had losses from my kuhli loaches, black widow tetras and panda corys. Good tip
I’ve been trying to figure out what I’ve been doing wrong and I keep losing my angles and yesterday I lost one of my dwarf guarami. I had bought some frozen mixed food with bloodworms in it and now looking are your video it all makes sense. Thank you for sharing this video and helping people figure out what’s happening to their fish
As someone debating bloodworms as a food source this was actually very informative. Yes it is true that all species are diffrent and while 1 may be ok, a diffrent genus or even co species may have adverse reactions.. To put it in terms alot of humans can relate with. Some people are lactose intolerant while some can chug gallons of milk and eat blocks of cheese without issue. A diabetic will get very sick if their sugar intake is too high or too low depending on type a or b. While some people can eat sweets all day and have no problems.. last example is how some people can handle spicy food or can't and get acid reflux or worse GI tract issues. And as for food quality. It has turned up in every type of mass produced food source. Poor conditions and cheap quality are used to get a bigger profit margin but in the end it is a hazard to use. Thank you for the great information 😀
Recently lost 3 angels in my 90 gal community tank, wondering if this might have contributed. One of them would always go ham on them, sometimes until his stomach dropped. Was just trying to give them a more varied diet.. Thanks for the food for thought. My gf and I watch and learn alot from ya dude. 👍🏻👍🏻
This helps clarify stuff for me - I have two African dwarf frogs and a betta and had been feeding frozen blood worms. A few days ago I found one frog having trouble - looking fatter than usual and constantly floating to the top. I managed to isolate her in a net and then very gently with a finger massaged her tummy,sides, and back while she was still in the water. A minute or two later I saw some large air bubbles go up and she was able to stay down finally - Reading around I switched to brine shrimp and now a few days later she’s slimmer and doing well
Great video. I appreciate your direct clear way of delivering info. This is what makes your channel so helpful. Time is valuable and we need to learn everyday about what is good and what is not. I feed bloodworms occasionally. They are grown here in the US to my guppies, Bettas and mosquito fish. I will watch out more for any bad smells. Also, thawed frozen peas with the skins pulled off, are great for most fish as long as there is a filter system and plenty of aeration. Thanks very much for sharing!! USA
Great video. Interesting, I’ve never heard about issues with bloodworms before. I feed my various tanks, mostly livebearers and plecos, and a single Krib tank, bloodworms once a week, and they lose their little minds over it. Rest of the week, I go between frozen brine shrimp, rephashy, and a few different flakes.
Thanks! I have's Rams and Apistos. Bought freezer dried blood worms and wasn't sure. Bought frozen brine shrimp and daphnia. They like that better. Thanks again for the heads up!! Cheers!
hi from ukraine! what you said is 100% right - bloodworms feed on rotting things in the water and often they are carriers of bacteria that does not get killed by freezing. same goes for some paracites and fish tuberculosis. All the breeders in east europe do not use blood worms , dispite the fact it is the cheapest food we can get here - you can harvest it in any lake or swapm here.
Thanks Nick for a great review. I will try the Frozen Brine Shrimp from now on. I bought a small box of Frozen Blood Worms and only dropped a sliver in to the tank with my Betta. Dwarf Pea Puffer, a Bronze Cory Cat, and 2 young Brown Bristlenose Plecos. I am just seeing who is getting along together before spending money on a small shoal of 5 or more of the Bronze Cory Cat and the Brown Bristlenose Pleco. So far, they are all getting along great. I am about to set up a 55G. Neither the DPP, nor my Betta touched them; however, my Cory and the Plecos all devoured them. Tomorrow, I will get some Frozen Brine Shrimp and try them, instead. I watched one of your videos on raising Baby Brine Shrimp. It does not seem to be that difficult. For now, until I move and have a clean up sink to work out of, that will be on the Wish List. I am 70 and currently in a very small apartment while I am still recovering from spinal and shoulder injuries from a fall. This can wait until after I move my own place where I can set up a separate work space near my Aquarium that will make it easier to do vacuuming, water changes, etc. You are doing a great job. Kudos.
Baby tiger Oscar was hand feeding and even jumping out of the water to grab it from my hand thought it would be a nice treat to get him bloodworms and he started swimming in twists and had no control and was dead a day later
I wonder if maybe this is the reason he had issues with it , as it should not be done that way , fish eating frozen stuff can cause problems in their digestive system
My personnal experience: I lost a couple of Apistogramma and a couple of microgeophagus, just after I start feeding them with blood worms. I switched to frozen artemias and no more problem. I believe also that the cuticle of these worms is too thick.
I've had issues with blood worms in many fish. I personally started to cultcher White worms as you can gut load the worms impacting your fishes diet with a bit more proten or fiber. I have multiple containers going for this reason and have had good success. I think the best part of this is its a live food and after the initial cost it by far the cheapest food I've feed an by far one of the healthiest.
Interesting! My Endlers, White Cloud Mountain Minnows and Ghost Shrimp tend to prefer frozen bloodworms over regular flake and granule food. Maybe Cichlids are more prone to being affected by bloodworms than other species. Depends on product quality too. I use Hikari Bloodworms, and they come in a healthy shade of red. My fish tend fight over the long ones a lot. Thank you for sharing!
We have heaps of frozen food at my local aquarium shop, I mostly get krill, daphnia, and brine shrimp but I still also feed blood worms to my Cory’s and bristlenoses
Omg thanks so much. I started feeding bloodworms 2 a week a month ago and today I lost my breeding pair of praecox. U have saved me, I would have had no clue. Omg thanksssssssssssssssss lol
I live in the subtropics. I have an outdoor pond and see the little cocoon on the bottom all the time. The reason the cories and plecos are fine with them is they are bottom feeders where the bloodworm lives. These worms don't spend the majority of there time in the middle water column (Where Im guessing the fish that have issues with eating it live?). They may well be farmed with manure however the bloodworm is a detritivore , basically it likes rotting leaves and stuff like that found at the bottom of a pool of water. Its like your shrimp and freshwater yabbies (Crawfish) in terms of what it eats. if you put a tray of water outside in insect friendly weather wherever you live with a couple of teaspoons of finely crushed up plant matter leaves etc. You will end up with bloodworms after the third or forth day most likely. They look like tiny brown socks made of finely crushed plant matter on the bottom. The worms are hiding in these. if you use a fine pet fish net you can wash the worms from the sock. easy to farm. they only eat as worms so if you use a mozzie net fabric of the top of the container the worms will them turn into adults like mozzies, breed and then lay eggs again that will turn into more blood worms... just remember to add more crushed up whizzed plant matter as needed. (Just dried leaves works well )This way you can be reassured they aren't been raised on pig pooh.
Sorry to tell you but those are not bloodworms, they're bagworms which are the larva of stoneflies, not midges. In a warmer northern climate though I've seen bloodworms show up after about a month and exact same method to attract them but bloodworms actually are naturally red in color and behave similarly to mosquito larva- not to say bagworms aren't a good alternative but you may want to keep in mind that they'll use sand, wood and rock fragments to make their tents if they're available in the container so you probably want to remove them from that before feeding just in case they used inorganic material that your fish can't digest. Btw mosquito larva are another alternative but be careful about attracting them and target any floating cocoons before they hatch since no one wants the adults running loose, esp if you bring the culture indoors to feed your fish
I decided to feed my Bettas with frozen bloodworm. A week later I found the hydra in the aquarium. I think now to switch to auloforus of home breeding.
I just found your channel, I really love it! So awesome videos 😀 The background noises are kind of a bummer if one want to binge watch a lot of videos, but I guess it's hard to do anything about that. Keep up the good work! 🥳👏
I feed blood worms to my cichlids a couple times a week along with a super mixed diet of frozen brine shrimp, beef heart, cichlid delight, and various veggies . They’re healthy as can be and go crazy for blood worms if you treat blood worms as a treat
I agree the carapace causes issues and is hard for some fish also Bettas to digest. I breed Alien Bettas along with many other types and frozen bloodworms have caused more Swim Bladder issues than anything else.. just frozen brine shrimp is only frozen I feed now.
Super informative! One of my GBR's got bloat but the rest were fine and have been feeding them bloodworms along with frozen brine shrimp. Might just stick to the shrimp from now on to be safe. Thanks heaps!
I have freeze dried blood worms and have never had any issues. I put them in a pepper grinder and feed my guppy fry with them along with live brine shrimp and of course flake food
Thanks for the information 👍 I just bought a pair of dwarf cockatoo cichlids and literally have them on the table ready to go and seen your video thanks great channel 👍 🐠🐠🐠
really strange, I have fed frozen blood worms to all of my cichlids, including Discus, Firemouths, Convicts, Apistos and African Shell dwellers without any negative consequences, for over 30 years. They have all bred successfully and I have always been praised on the quality of my fish.
Interesting info, I only feed bloodworms to my corys and all good there. I know alot of people have controversy over beef heart as well. I personally don't feed it anymore but when I did most of my fish wouldn't eat it except for angelfish and some live bearers
Always buy a good brand normally Aquarium shops sell good quality ones. I have never had a issue in over 30 years using them, I only feed them a couple of times a week.
I keep fathead minnows which are just the wild type version of rosy red minnows, and the family of insects that blood worms belong to (chironomidae) are precisely what they eat in the wild, they make up a large portion of the animal protein that they eat too. So I guess they should be perfectly fine for the digestive system of my fish.
I feed blood worms to my tiger barbs and it's by far their favourite food however it's caused a few of them serious swim bladder problems when they overeat. The bigger ones get greedy and either pick up two at a time or finish quicker and come back for more. I've had to quarantine two of them before due to swim bladder issues after eating blood worms. It took me a while to realise it was the blood worms that were causing this. I am sure it was overeating though. I would be very careful when feeding your fish these. Good video.
Only had problems with lryetail Swordtails (excuse spelling) and swordtail babies getting bloated and dying after bloodworm but now I just brine shrimp with not problems. I heard it's just the larger bloodworms that do this as they have bigger hairs and are a different species to the regular ones. However my experience put me off them all. Good to here your point of view.
I mostly feed mine live brine shrimp. Once a week I give Hikari frozen bloodworms or brine shrimp. So far no issue on my GBR & Apisto. As of beef 🥩 heart its just smelly and pollute your tank. I just avoid. Even when I had discuss and althum.
Great video but I think one point you missed is the more diverse there diet is generally the better. This is because different food obviously contains different nutrition so definitely try to have a little bit of variety in there diet where possible. Cheers
I alternate bloodworms, brine shrimp and blackworms for my betta and neon tetras, and algae wafers for my bristlenose pleco. I don't know why but my betta refuses pellets (the tetras love them though) but he loves his shrimp and worms. My pleco will eat anything.
I've fed frozen blood worms (thawed in a cup of aquarium water) for years and have fortunately had no problems. They don't seem to bother my Bolivian Rams or cherry barbs at all. I also only feed it once or twice a week as a treat.
In over 30 years of raising Angels and discus, I have never and will never ever feed my fish blood worms. Thank you for this video! It's super sad to see so many people feed their fish this crap! 😢
I've heard this from several sources recently. I have not had any issues that I can directly relate to Blood Worms but I have been feeding Omega One Frozen Blood Worms usually 2-3 times per week for the last year or so. I wish there was more solid resources and research done to validate some the claims on either side. If my fish end up liking frozen Brine Shrimp as much I don't see any reason not to switch to that. I do want to do some deeper research into this to see what else can be found.
I bought 50 cardinal tetra and neon tetra which is quite expensive here and they seemed to be quite good and been hangin and growing for a week which is far from my expectation cause they easily die but they didn’t. not until i feed them frozen bloodworms. i have no idea what did i do why they all die out of nowhere😢 thanks to this video i get to know why👍🏻
I often get some blood worms in with my daphnia tubs. Especially over winter when I take the netting off the tubs (they keep the mosquitoes from getting too bad in summer 😬). They feed on the same broken down leaf matter I have in their for the daphnia, and also hide in any algae I have growing on the sides. Aside from live ones, I feed my community tank with frozen blood worms and other dry foods about twice a day. The fish are doing great, but I did have the two Bolivian rams get bloat and die. I haven’t replaced them, as I have learned that the blood worms might have given them bloat like the lake Malawi cichlids get, so you might be into something there Nick.
I lost 3 black neon tetras to bloat since I bought some bloodworms a few months ago. I should've figured it was those after the 1st fish got sick since it was the only new food.. Never had a problem with frozen brine shrimp I guess I'll stick with those
Thanks for this video...have fed bloodworm to my amazon tank and I think it has been a factor in the fact that I seem to be loosing Rams but the Cory's, Plecos and Tetras all appear to be fine...
So now I know what killed my GBR. He was a very healthy, active fish that always came to the rim of the tank when it was feeding time. I wanted to diversify it's diet and started throwing some bloodworms every now and again. I noticed one day he was getting very lethargic and ended up dying from dropsie. . . Never understood why as the rest of it's tankmates were fine (endlers and pygmy cories) until I ran in to this video. Damn worms. . .
Thank you for your knowledge.As Ive got a discus tank with sterbei cory's and been tempted adding frozen blood worms for both fish.Heard about some fish keepers feeding frozen blood worms and some against.Will take your advice and feed something else apart from beefheart.
Hey Mate, I love your videos and I am from Bris too!! Are you northside or southside!! I am wanting to get into some breeding as well as I love this hobby so much!
I got a leech in my acvarium. I don't know where it come from, but i am suspecting eithe plants, or frozen food, that i fed my fish. From what i read, leech can live frozen for a very long time.
I have some small pellets that all my fish seem to enjoy that I use the most often. Occasionally I'll throw in some wafers for the bottom, some bug bites, or maybe some a frozen cube. That's usually once every 1-2 weeks and more of a treat then their actual diet. Haven't ran into issues yet but it may just be an ok brand of worms
I fed my cichlids live juvi guppies they over populate the tank they are in that until I add a bigger fish to keep the population in check I feed a few to my cichlids that I keep in a different tank. Same goes for ram snails and ghost shrimp I let populate in a third tank.
Nv had problems with bloodworms from brands like hikari (sterilised & infuse with vitamins); been using for years. i tend to vary the diet of my fishes though.
I wish I had seen this video months ago. Maybe even. Few years ago. I e had 3 bettas that I've fed frozen blood worm too. Funnily enough all 3 had gotten Ill shortly after. 2 of which got dropsy. It was on the 3rd one I have took the decision to never use frozen again. It should be noted all 3 fish had swollen stomachs straight after feeding blood worms too
wow ive actually noticed that my bolivian ram will chew the bloodworm and then spit out the clear carapace, and i was confused at first what it was. i think ill switch to frozen brine shrimp, and use frozen foods as a once or twice a week treats.
I don't know for certain, but I think frozen bloodworms may have led to the demise of my male Honey Gourami. He had spawned with my female and she ate the eggs, I separated them and set up a perfect breeding tank for him. Live blackworms got really hard to find in the USA in 2024, so I started giving them both frozen bloodworms instead to supplement flakes. A week before I was going to put female in to breed again, male dropsy and despite seeming like he was recovering for a few weeks, eventually died. So I never got to breed him again.
Omg good looking but I have feed my triple reds oops only reason was the shops have been out of live black worms but I will stop the feeding of the blood worms for that tank
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Keep in mind if you have been feeding them and haven’t had any issues, this does not mean I am wrong. Your bloodworms might be coming from a better supplier!
Thoughts on Hikari and San Francisco Bay? Probably most commonly used.
Also other frozen foods like Daphnia and BBS?
_THANK YOU FOR THE INFO ON BLOODWORMS AND RAMS! NO MORE FROZEN BLOODWORMS!_ this might be my reason for deaths I couldn't get my finger on.
I've had apistogrammas die after eating frozen bloodworms from both Hikari and SFB brands, I'm so thankful for this video now I don't feel so crazy thinking the bloodworms were the issues.
I feed mine (can o worms) and your not wrong cause it's your experience with the worms your talking about with your fish
I have found that they constipate my apistogramas and German rams really bad. As far as my angel's, and plecos I haven't had any issues. I only feed Hikari bloodworms though.
Btw greetings from Tampa Florida! You're the best channel when it comes to giving up front advice on keeping fish without all the frills and gimmicks that a lot of other channels plug into their content! I've been a fan of you and your partners for almost 2 years now ever since I stumbled across y'all when I started my journey. Back then I started out with a couple hillstream loach and a mustard gas Betta. Now I have a whole bedroom dedicated to breeding fish with the overflow of grow out tanks taking up more and more of my bedroom. I have stole or should I say borrowed a lot of tricks from you especially on raising my fry.
I want to mention a thing about Bloodworms; Years ago, I used to have a tank of oscars. They were fully mature, and I used to give them frozen bloodworms occasionally as a treat. Maybe once a week. And I used to just plop the frozen 'cube' in the tank and let them go at it. This was fine a few times, but then one time one of them swallowed the frozen clump. Because they are cold-blooded, they can only thaw them at water temperature, so it stayed frozen inside him long enough to actually damage the swim bladder and cause it to fail. All he could do after that was float along the top and look absolutely miserable. I tried to see if he could be healed. He would eat, reluctantly (for an oscar) if I hand-fed him directly. But after a month of hoping he'd pull through, I finally had to euthanize the poor little guy. It was absolutely heartbreaking. Since then, whenever I feed bloodworms, I always thaw them in warm water completely before putting them in the tank.
I just recently had a similar situation but luckily I didn't lose any fish. I just started keeping fish about a year ago and about 3 months ago, I learned about frozen blood worms. I bought a pack and I dropped a two or three cubes in my tank every other day as a treat and a break from flakes & pellets. My fish loved them. After that pack was gone, I went to go buy some more. The store was out of them but I spotted a really cool looking Salvini Cichlid that I just had to have. I bought him, took him home, and put him in my tank. He was a good bit bigger than my other Cichlids and quickly became the tank boss. A few days later, the blood worms were back in stock so I bought another pack and I gave my fish a treat that same day. I was watching all my fish taking turns nibbling on the frozen cubes when all the sudden, the Salvini shot to the top of the water and swallowed the whole cube. My first reaction was "Cool" but then I started thinking "That can't be good". I never even considered bloat but I was more concerned about a frozen block of food in my fish's stomach. I was more afraid that it was painful to him....kind of like humans getting an ice cream headache. That's when I had the idea of dropping the cubes in a bowl of water and thawing them out before feeding them to my fish. This turned out to be better than dropping the entire cube in because more fish get to eat some of the worms. Thankfully, I didn't lose my Salvini to bloat. I hate to hear that you lost yours.
Been feeding frozen blood worm to my fishes for years and have been all well.. Personally, i think it depends on the brand of frozen blood worm used.. Some brands have poor quality blood worm which looks bad and are black in colour..
Which brand do you use?
@@Ummmmmkay88 only Hikari
No issues with Omega One feeding my community tank. Not the only thing they get though. Note, freeze dried to avoid any pathogens! If feeding frozen, absolutely you can run into problems.
@@blaircox1589tbh my fish love them and my crayfish devours them actually prefers them over the minnows i gave him, to the point i’ve had a minnow with him for over a week now im just letting them be together but i use omega one too and my other fish devours them but i still use flakes too but it’s really the only think my crayfish enjoys to eat
i would also like to mention that my young koi fish love them and my molly likes them too, but again i would definitely give them their flakes or pellets too and only every once in awhile i give them the bloodworms i’ve been scared of bloodworms for their main diet because even before i did deep research i’ve know that bloodworms aren’t the more nutritious things for them but my crayfish mainly needs protein in his diet and that’s why i give him bloodworms and the minnow just eats whatever’s left over and then i throw in a small amount of flakes to enhance colors and give them a balanced diet
I'm messaging from Singapore. There are no pig farms here! There was about two which closed 30 years ago! All food is imported as there is no farming due to not enough land. A few chickens are kept for egg laying,thats all.
I used to breed discus I had over 15000 gallon and over 700 discus I fed them nothing but bloodworms but high quality ones only. Always had great success with breeding and never had any die offs
I have run into a couple pretty serious breeders who hold the same opinion of bloodworms as you do. However, through talking out what happened with them I think we have narrowed down the real problem. I have fed literally thousands of pounds of bloodworms (not an exaggeration, thousands of pounds of them) over the past 20 years with zero problems. My theory is that whenever someone has had a problem it had to be one of two things. 1, you bought crap bloodworms just like that article you were reading was stating, although I’ve never seen those available at any store, only through direct ordering from Asia. Or 2, and I think far more likely is that when these people have problems with bloodworms they at some point along the shipping lines (farm to packaging plant, plant to shipper, shipper to wholesaler, wholesaler to local store, and sometimes there are several steps in between, somewhere in there they were thawed out, went rotten, and were refrozen after. Sadly most hood profit above their clients and will 100% refreeze them. Just my two cents, obviously everyone is entitled to their own opinions.
I think you're right. People are buying from bad suppliers. If insect carapace killed fish there wouldn't be very many fresh water fish in the world.
Great points.
Greed is a killer.
Wait is omega a good brand?
OK blood worm have killed 4 of my fish 3 within a week and I just thought they had a disease or some thing and I haven't put blood worm in my tank for a few weeks and today I put some in and a small molly was being greedy with them and I've just found it dead with half the blood worm sticking out of its mouth ,I'm actually gutted 😢had this fish from a fry and he was doing so well ,so 4 fish dead and all were eating blood worm
high-quality bloodworms are a good supplementary food for species that appreciate extra protein in their diet (bettas, cories, etc.) but, of course, there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to fish. this is an important topic that isn’t often discussed, thank you for this video
So what brand is high quality blood worms
I found this video to be extremely helpful, and I'm glad I came across your channel. I am getting back into the freshwater hobby after many years of being out of it. It's interesting because my current bettas actually want nothing to do with blood worms. I won't be feeding them to any of my future cichlids. I agree that the homemade diets can be really nutritious.
Thank you for confirming this for me! I had a Ram die on me the other day after feeding him bloodworms and I didn't know what to make of it. A half hour after feeding the bloodworms, he was at a 45 degree angle gasping at the surface and dead a few hours later. He was part of my perfectly healthy breeding pair that I've been getting a ton of GBR fry out of so it didn't make any sense at all. I've been feeding them bloodworms daily based on Dean's direction to make sure they keep breeding but I think it's costing me fish now. You and Justin definitely have a much better grasp on the fine details of breeding.
Or, more likely, he was just going to die and the bloodworms had nothing to do with it.
All my fish have gone to surface hours after blood worms. So far two have randomly died :(
Was it frozen or freeze dried?
I stopped feeding Discus blood worms around 10 years ago and so many issues stopped. I do still feed to my Rams but "VERY SPARINGLY" I caught some blowback on this theory from top breeders. Great information and I feel very important 😀
Fast forward 10 years, im sure technology, resources and methods have vastly improved. Maybe give it a shot again and see if things have improved from 10 years ago
Technology has definitely changed that is exactly why I won't invite those issues for my very expensive fish. The dry foods and other foods are so superior to 10-20 years ago and give all the nutrients the fish need which sometimes are worth 500.00 plus. I don't question Hikari blood worms I think they are very high quality. It's the casings of the worm that get caught in the long digestive tract of these fish which causes stress and sickness. I think as a treat you would be fine but I'm not willing to buy truckloads of medication to treat my Discus and believe we feed this food for the look of the food more than the actual benefits to our Discus. I do feed it to my Rams and catfish to help induce spawning behavior but very minimal and cautiously. Just 1 man's opinion that works for me. Have a wonderful day and thank you for commenting 😊
Some very good points Nick. I think its one of those subjects that requires each person to make an informed decision based on their own experience and the fish they keep. When I started in fish we only had tubefex worms. Now those are hard to find because we've learned a lot about the poor conditions in which they are propagated.
Thabk you for bringing this ti attention!!!! I recently had a terrible experience with bloodworms!
My fish were fine for a year (nothing new added to the tank. No new plants, no new fish) and all of a sudden my corydoras got costiosis, otherwise known as ichthyobodosis... and the only thigh different is that I started introducing them to bloodworms... the only fish in my tank that ate bloodworms were corries, and they were the only ones that got sick! I lost 2 of them 😔. One had problem with their gills, and the other one was just eaten alive, which are both symptoms of that disease. At first I thought it was columnaris, cause it looked a lot like it, until I sent one of the dead ones for fish autopsy ( I had to cause I've noticed my other 8 corries were looking odd as well, and I really didn't want to lose them + they were expensive ) and they discovered it was costiosis! Which is pretty bad! So everyone feeding bloodworms, be extra careful!!! Cause eventhough they are frozen, it doesnt affect this bacteria.
Very comprehensive video Nick, nice! I feed bloodworms on occasions twice a month, if I remember. My community tank is mostly fed on frozen brine shrimp with spirulina or live brine shrimp and good quality dry food.
Hey man, I’m an apisto breeder/seller in the US. I can tell you over the last 2 years of breeding for profit that blood worms kill apisto. They don’t have the digestive track to handle the blood worms exoskeleton.
I lost some of my best breeders in the beginning due to blood worm bloat.
I may have lost a guppy to bloodworm bloat. But think I may have just oberfed
I’ve heard a lot of issues with blood worms for African dwarf frogs as well. I switched to live black worms and mysis shrimp. Same cost
Mine died this morning I fed him blood worms two days ago:( I’m not sure what else to feed them
I, too, have always substituted blood worms with mysis shrimp. I feel it is a much better quality food.
Bloodworms are a great food in my experience.. i dont give it to my african cichlids but everything else gets it and ive never had an issue.. Though, i do find it interesting that you feed Beef Heart which is a land animal meat.. something they will never come across in the wild.. would def reconsider that in your concoction of homemade fish food :) cheers.
Great video Nick! Guppies and livebearers tend to like them in my experience. I haven't had any problems with them. Thanks for sharing! Happy Lunar New Year! 😄🧧
true. they love to eat them
I started feeding them to my guppies and platys and they spawn much more frequently now
Mine love them, but occasionally one will die looking like it’s stuffed up inside. So I’ll reduce the frequency from every other day to twice a week and see what happens.
Whoa thanks man. Just started frozen blood worms for my new tank full off angels. And I've had losses from my kuhli loaches, black widow tetras and panda corys. Good tip
Why does the article say that frozen mosquito larvae contain mainly water? Bloodworms are midge larvae. (Pronounced midge).
I’ve been trying to figure out what I’ve been doing wrong and I keep losing my angles and yesterday I lost one of my dwarf guarami. I had bought some frozen mixed food with bloodworms in it and now looking are your video it all makes sense. Thank you for sharing this video and helping people figure out what’s happening to their fish
Well I did learn 3 things tbh . Thank you my guy , might try it on my fish too 👍🏻✨
As someone debating bloodworms as a food source this was actually very informative. Yes it is true that all species are diffrent and while 1 may be ok, a diffrent genus or even co species may have adverse reactions..
To put it in terms alot of humans can relate with. Some people are lactose intolerant while some can chug gallons of milk and eat blocks of cheese without issue. A diabetic will get very sick if their sugar intake is too high or too low depending on type a or b. While some people can eat sweets all day and have no problems.. last example is how some people can handle spicy food or can't and get acid reflux or worse GI tract issues.
And as for food quality. It has turned up in every type of mass produced food source. Poor conditions and cheap quality are used to get a bigger profit margin but in the end it is a hazard to use.
Thank you for the great information 😀
Wow, that explains what happened to my rams. Thanks for the info
Recently lost 3 angels in my 90 gal community tank, wondering if this might have contributed. One of them would always go ham on them, sometimes until his stomach dropped. Was just trying to give them a more varied diet.. Thanks for the food for thought. My gf and I watch and learn alot from ya dude. 👍🏻👍🏻
This helps clarify stuff for me - I have two African dwarf frogs and a betta and had been feeding frozen blood worms. A few days ago I found one frog having trouble - looking fatter than usual and constantly floating to the top. I managed to isolate her in a net and then very gently with a finger massaged her tummy,sides, and back while she was still in the water. A minute or two later I saw some large air bubbles go up and she was able to stay down finally - Reading around I switched to brine shrimp and now a few days later she’s slimmer and doing well
Great video. I appreciate your direct clear way of delivering info. This is what makes your channel so helpful. Time is valuable and we need to learn everyday about what is good and what is not. I feed bloodworms occasionally. They are grown here in the US to my guppies, Bettas and mosquito fish.
I will watch out more for any bad smells. Also, thawed frozen peas with the skins pulled off, are great for most fish as long as there is a filter system and plenty of aeration. Thanks very much for sharing!! USA
4:42 - that Ram is just awesome!!!
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Had my jaw dropping too. Absolutely beautiful 🐠
Great video. Interesting, I’ve never heard about issues with bloodworms before.
I feed my various tanks, mostly livebearers and plecos, and a single Krib tank, bloodworms once a week, and they lose their little minds over it.
Rest of the week, I go between frozen brine shrimp, rephashy, and a few different flakes.
Thanks! I have's Rams and Apistos. Bought freezer dried blood worms and wasn't sure. Bought frozen brine shrimp and daphnia. They like that better. Thanks again for the heads up!! Cheers!
hi from ukraine! what you said is 100% right - bloodworms feed on rotting things in the water and often they are carriers of bacteria that does not get killed by freezing. same goes for some paracites and fish tuberculosis. All the breeders in east europe do not use blood worms , dispite the fact it is the cheapest food we can get here - you can harvest it in any lake or swapm here.
Honest, I’ve had corydoras losses after feeding frozen bloodworms. Only when I feed that, must be the skin like you said causing digestive issues.
Thanks Nick for a great review. I will try the Frozen Brine Shrimp from now on.
I bought a small box of Frozen Blood Worms and only dropped a sliver in to the tank with my Betta. Dwarf Pea Puffer, a Bronze Cory Cat, and 2 young Brown Bristlenose Plecos. I am just seeing who is getting along together before spending money on a small shoal of 5 or more of the Bronze Cory Cat and the Brown Bristlenose Pleco. So far, they are all getting along great. I am about to set up a 55G.
Neither the DPP, nor my Betta touched them; however, my Cory and the Plecos all devoured them.
Tomorrow, I will get some Frozen Brine Shrimp and try them, instead.
I watched one of your videos on raising Baby Brine Shrimp. It does not seem to be that difficult. For now, until I move and have a clean up sink to work out of, that will be on the Wish List. I am 70 and currently in a very small apartment while I am still recovering from spinal and shoulder injuries from a fall. This can wait until after I move my own place where I can set up a separate work space near my Aquarium that will make it easier to do vacuuming, water changes, etc.
You are doing a great job. Kudos.
Baby tiger Oscar was hand feeding and even jumping out of the water to grab it from my hand thought it would be a nice treat to get him bloodworms and he started swimming in twists and had no control and was dead a day later
Never had an issue with bloodworms. But i dont put the frozen cube inside the tank immediately. I thaw them and rinse before feeding.
I wonder if maybe this is the reason he had issues with it , as it should not be done that way , fish eating frozen stuff can cause problems in their digestive system
My personnal experience: I lost a couple of Apistogramma and a couple of microgeophagus, just after I start feeding them with blood worms. I switched to frozen artemias and no more problem. I believe also that the cuticle of these worms is too thick.
Thank you for this video, I’m so glad I saw this before I continued feeding my angels blood worms.
I've had issues with blood worms in many fish. I personally started to cultcher White worms as you can gut load the worms impacting your fishes diet with a bit more proten or fiber. I have multiple containers going for this reason and have had good success. I think the best part of this is its a live food and after the initial cost it by far the cheapest food I've feed an by far one of the healthiest.
Interesting! My Endlers, White Cloud Mountain Minnows and Ghost Shrimp tend to prefer frozen bloodworms over regular flake and granule food. Maybe Cichlids are more prone to being affected by bloodworms than other species. Depends on product quality too. I use Hikari Bloodworms, and they come in a healthy shade of red. My fish tend fight over the long ones a lot. Thank you for sharing!
We have heaps of frozen food at my local aquarium shop, I mostly get krill, daphnia, and brine shrimp but I still also feed blood worms to my Cory’s and bristlenoses
Omg thanks so much. I started feeding bloodworms 2 a week a month ago and today I lost my breeding pair of praecox. U have saved me, I would have had no clue. Omg thanksssssssssssssssss lol
Great advice brother from another mother
My jaguar cichlid only wants bloodworms. I also feed him a few cichlid pellets, but he gobbles up the bloodworms rather quickly.
I live in the subtropics. I have an outdoor pond and see the little cocoon on the bottom all the time. The reason the cories and plecos are fine with them is they are bottom feeders where the bloodworm lives. These worms don't spend the majority of there time in the middle water column (Where Im guessing the fish that have issues with eating it live?). They may well be farmed with manure however the bloodworm is a detritivore , basically it likes rotting leaves and stuff like that found at the bottom of a pool of water. Its like your shrimp and freshwater yabbies (Crawfish) in terms of what it eats. if you put a tray of water outside in insect friendly weather wherever you live with a couple of teaspoons of finely crushed up plant matter leaves etc. You will end up with bloodworms after the third or forth day most likely. They look like tiny brown socks made of finely crushed plant matter on the bottom. The worms are hiding in these. if you use a fine pet fish net you can wash the worms from the sock.
easy to farm. they only eat as worms so if you use a mozzie net fabric of the top of the container the worms will them turn into adults like mozzies, breed and then lay eggs again that will turn into more blood worms... just remember to add more crushed up whizzed plant matter as needed. (Just dried leaves works well )This way you can be reassured they aren't been raised on pig pooh.
Sorry to tell you but those are not bloodworms, they're bagworms which are the larva of stoneflies, not midges. In a warmer northern climate though I've seen bloodworms show up after about a month and exact same method to attract them but bloodworms actually are naturally red in color and behave similarly to mosquito larva- not to say bagworms aren't a good alternative but you may want to keep in mind that they'll use sand, wood and rock fragments to make their tents if they're available in the container so you probably want to remove them from that before feeding just in case they used inorganic material that your fish can't digest. Btw mosquito larva are another alternative but be careful about attracting them and target any floating cocoons before they hatch since no one wants the adults running loose, esp if you bring the culture indoors to feed your fish
I decided to feed my Bettas with frozen bloodworm. A week later I found the hydra in the aquarium. I think now to switch to auloforus of home breeding.
Thank you for this video. My pea puffer died and that's all I ever fed him 😢
I just found your channel, I really love it! So awesome videos 😀 The background noises are kind of a bummer if one want to binge watch a lot of videos, but I guess it's hard to do anything about that. Keep up the good work! 🥳👏
Great video bro. All we ever hear is how amazing and great blood worms are I wasn’t aware of those cons thanks
I feed blood worms to my cichlids a couple times a week along with a super mixed diet of frozen brine shrimp, beef heart, cichlid delight, and various veggies . They’re healthy as can be and go crazy for blood worms if you treat blood worms as a treat
Great content nick keep it up. Also u make your own foods, any video on that coming soon. Would be great to see.
I agree the carapace causes issues and is hard for some fish also Bettas to digest. I breed Alien Bettas along with many other types and frozen bloodworms have caused more Swim Bladder issues than anything else.. just frozen brine shrimp is only frozen I feed now.
Super informative! One of my GBR's got bloat but the rest were fine and have been feeding them bloodworms along with frozen brine shrimp. Might just stick to the shrimp from now on to be safe. Thanks heaps!
Lol at the start of every KFS video…”EVERYONE IS GOING TO HATE ME” 🤣
I have freeze dried blood worms and have never had any issues. I put them in a pepper grinder and feed my guppy fry with them along with live brine shrimp and of course flake food
Yea freeze dried are a little different. but how nutritious can freeze dried stuff be?
Thanks for the information 👍 I just bought a pair of dwarf cockatoo cichlids and literally have them on the table ready to go and seen your video thanks great channel 👍 🐠🐠🐠
really strange, I have fed frozen blood worms to all of my cichlids, including Discus, Firemouths, Convicts, Apistos and African Shell dwellers without any negative consequences, for over 30 years.
They have all bred successfully and I have always been praised on the quality of my fish.
Maybe it’s some brand they have in Australia , cause I’ve never had issues with bloodworm either
@@salvolondon i am in Australia
Interesting info, I only feed bloodworms to my corys and all good there. I know alot of people have controversy over beef heart as well. I personally don't feed it anymore but when I did most of my fish wouldn't eat it except for angelfish and some live bearers
Some of our guppies got bloat and we where thinking that it might be because of bloodworms. And i think you kinda confirmed it.
This happened to me yesterday this has for me aswell
Awesome vid
Hi, love KFS. Any chance of doing a homemade fish food video? If you’ve already done this, please let me know where I can find it? Thanks so much
Always buy a good brand normally Aquarium shops sell good quality ones. I have never had a issue in over 30 years using them, I only feed them a couple of times a week.
I keep fathead minnows which are just the wild type version of rosy red minnows, and the family of insects that blood worms belong to (chironomidae) are precisely what they eat in the wild, they make up a large portion of the animal protein that they eat too. So I guess they should be perfectly fine for the digestive system of my fish.
I feed blood worms to my tiger barbs and it's by far their favourite food however it's caused a few of them serious swim bladder problems when they overeat. The bigger ones get greedy and either pick up two at a time or finish quicker and come back for more. I've had to quarantine two of them before due to swim bladder issues after eating blood worms. It took me a while to realise it was the blood worms that were causing this. I am sure it was overeating though. I would be very careful when feeding your fish these. Good video.
Great video Nick! Might stick to using the bloodworm on the plecs!
Only had problems with lryetail Swordtails (excuse spelling) and swordtail babies getting bloated and dying after bloodworm but now I just brine shrimp with not problems. I heard it's just the larger bloodworms that do this as they have bigger hairs and are a different species to the regular ones. However my experience put me off them all. Good to here your point of view.
I mostly feed mine live brine shrimp. Once a week I give Hikari frozen bloodworms or brine shrimp. So far no issue on my GBR & Apisto. As of beef 🥩 heart its just smelly and pollute your tank. I just avoid. Even when I had discuss and althum.
Great video but I think one point you missed is the more diverse there diet is generally the better. This is because different food obviously contains different nutrition so definitely try to have a little bit of variety in there diet where possible. Cheers
I alternate bloodworms, brine shrimp and blackworms for my betta and neon tetras, and algae wafers for my bristlenose pleco. I don't know why but my betta refuses pellets (the tetras love them though) but he loves his shrimp and worms. My pleco will eat anything.
Great video as always man,
you should share the home food recipe with us. 😊👍
Good info, I would like to get more info on making my own fish foods. Nothing like good home cooking.
I've fed frozen blood worms (thawed in a cup of aquarium water) for years and have fortunately had no problems. They don't seem to bother my Bolivian Rams or cherry barbs at all. I also only feed it once or twice a week as a treat.
In over 30 years of raising Angels and discus, I have never and will never ever feed my fish blood worms. Thank you for this video! It's super sad to see so many people feed their fish this crap! 😢
I've heard this from several sources recently. I have not had any issues that I can directly relate to Blood Worms but I have been feeding Omega One Frozen Blood Worms usually 2-3 times per week for the last year or so. I wish there was more solid resources and research done to validate some the claims on either side. If my fish end up liking frozen Brine Shrimp as much I don't see any reason not to switch to that. I do want to do some deeper research into this to see what else can be found.
I bought 50 cardinal tetra and neon tetra which is quite expensive here and they seemed to be quite good and been hangin and growing for a week which is far from my expectation cause they easily die but they didn’t. not until i feed them frozen bloodworms. i have no idea what did i do why they all die out of nowhere😢 thanks to this video i get to know why👍🏻
I often get some blood worms in with my daphnia tubs. Especially over winter when I take the netting off the tubs (they keep the mosquitoes from getting too bad in summer 😬). They feed on the same broken down leaf matter I have in their for the daphnia, and also hide in any algae I have growing on the sides. Aside from live ones, I feed my community tank with frozen blood worms and other dry foods about twice a day. The fish are doing great, but I did have the two Bolivian rams get bloat and die. I haven’t replaced them, as I have learned that the blood worms might have given them bloat like the lake Malawi cichlids get, so you might be into something there Nick.
Good to know. I have been feeding bloodworms and brine shrimp to my angel/cory tank and I will stop bloodworms for the angels
I lost 3 black neon tetras to bloat since I bought some bloodworms a few months ago. I should've figured it was those after the 1st fish got sick since it was the only new food.. Never had a problem with frozen brine shrimp I guess I'll stick with those
Thanks for this video...have fed bloodworm to my amazon tank and I think it has been a factor in the fact that I seem to be loosing Rams but the Cory's, Plecos and Tetras all appear to be fine...
So now I know what killed my GBR. He was a very healthy, active fish that always came to the rim of the tank when it was feeding time. I wanted to diversify it's diet and started throwing some bloodworms every now and again. I noticed one day he was getting very lethargic and ended up dying from dropsie. . . Never understood why as the rest of it's tankmates were fine (endlers and pygmy cories) until I ran in to this video. Damn worms. . .
Nick- remember this is your channel and you can say whatever you want! Who cares what everyone else says. Lol
Thank you for your knowledge.As Ive got a discus tank with sterbei cory's and been tempted adding frozen blood worms for both fish.Heard about some fish keepers feeding frozen blood worms and some against.Will take your advice and feed something else apart from beefheart.
Nice video! thanks!
Great Video, many thank's 💪👍
Hey Mate, I love your videos and I am from Bris too!! Are you northside or southside!! I am wanting to get into some breeding as well as I love this hobby so much!
I got a leech in my acvarium.
I don't know where it come from, but i am suspecting eithe plants, or frozen food, that i fed my fish.
From what i read, leech can live frozen for a very long time.
I have some small pellets that all my fish seem to enjoy that I use the most often. Occasionally I'll throw in some wafers for the bottom, some bug bites, or maybe some a frozen cube. That's usually once every 1-2 weeks and more of a treat then their actual diet. Haven't ran into issues yet but it may just be an ok brand of worms
30 years i have been using them no issue and i have used many many different brands over the years
Any ideas on when you will have gbrs or blue blacks back on your site for sale. Keep up the good work
I have had really bad experience with them, half of my fish in my community tank died after I start feeding the blood worms 🙁
I fed my cichlids live juvi guppies they over populate the tank they are in that until I add a bigger fish to keep the population in check I feed a few to my cichlids that I keep in a different tank. Same goes for ram snails and ghost shrimp I let populate in a third tank.
Nv had problems with bloodworms from brands like hikari (sterilised & infuse with vitamins); been using for years. i tend to vary the diet of my fishes though.
Great video!
they also have little hooks that damage the insides of the fish
hello, fellow Malaysian here. I’ve been buying frozen bloodworms and feeding them to my fishies for about 3 years now, so far no problems at all.
I wish I had seen this video months ago. Maybe even. Few years ago. I e had 3 bettas that I've fed frozen blood worm too. Funnily enough all 3 had gotten Ill shortly after. 2 of which got dropsy. It was on the 3rd one I have took the decision to never use frozen again. It should be noted all 3 fish had swollen stomachs straight after feeding blood worms too
Could you comment or make a video on how you prep, make and store and feed the home made food?
What makes your homemade food green. Would you mind sharing the recipe?
wow ive actually noticed that my bolivian ram will chew the bloodworm and then spit out the clear carapace, and i was confused at first what it was. i think ill switch to frozen brine shrimp, and use frozen foods as a once or twice a week treats.
I don't know for certain, but I think frozen bloodworms may have led to the demise of my male Honey Gourami. He had spawned with my female and she ate the eggs, I separated them and set up a perfect breeding tank for him. Live blackworms got really hard to find in the USA in 2024, so I started giving them both frozen bloodworms instead to supplement flakes. A week before I was going to put female in to breed again, male dropsy and despite seeming like he was recovering for a few weeks, eventually died. So I never got to breed him again.
I keep afican dwarf frogs and pet stores always seem to recommend blood worms but again this can cause dropsy/bloat.
The July negative effects I’ve had are from freeze dried bloodworms, have had lots of bloat problems from those.
Omg good looking but I have feed my triple reds oops only reason was the shops have been out of live black worms but I will stop the feeding of the blood worms for that tank