[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Blackworms (was Re: Hatching Problems)
Paul Westall wrote:
>
> What species are blackworms?
California Blackworms are *Lumbriculus variegatus*. [The ** is an old
usenet/bbs convention for indicating italics in any all-ASCII system, BTW]
> I always assumed that they were just another
> species of Tubifex, a little different from the "red worms" often sold in
> fish stores.
Common names are a pain. AFAIK, blackworms and tubifex are only similar in
appearance. They aren't even in the same genus (tubifex are *Tubifex
tubifex*). The aquarium trade sold true tubifex, collected from raw-sewage
ditches, for many years. Stores were forced to switch, in most states,
because the potential for bringing in human disease was deemed to be too
great.
The local fish stores started selling blackworms from such commercial places
as Aquatic Foods (http://aquaticfoods.com/worms.html), but they kept the
common name of the previous worms. Tubifex are bright red, very slender (1/3
as thick as blackworms) and are great fish food if you purge and rinse them
enough times. They can live in far more contaminated water than most other
animals, and the EPA even lists their presence as prima facie evidence that
the water is polluted. [They are actually one of EPA's favorite indicator
species, I think.]
Blackworms tend to be fairly dark brown, even a bit reddish brown,
sometimes. They require far cleaner water, but rich food sources are still
needed to produce them in quantity. In CA they come from dairy-field-runoff
ponds, and the settling ponds at food packing plants. In other parts of the
country, they are found and harvested from the outflow water at cold-water
fish-farms (mostly trout, I think).
There's more information in the Carolina Biological site (
http://www.carolina.com/tips/worm/worm.htm ), and on the Krib (at
http://www.thekrib.com/Food/bloodworms.html#0 ).
The Carolina article is particularly interesting. If you read all these
references, it will probably be way more than you really wanted to know. :-)
Wright
--
Wright Huntley, Fremont CA, USA, 510 494-8679 huntleyone at home dot com
If it ain't broke, don't fix it -- and, especially,
don't let politicians fix it. ... Thomas Sowell
*** http://www.self-gov.org/index.html ***
---------------
See http://www.aka.org/AKA/subkillietalk.html to unsubscribe
References: