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Re: Blackworms in substrate
Well you have brought anouther lurker out of the
closet. I read the postings on the idea of using the
Blackworms in the substrate and thought I would pass this
along.
First. Thanks to all for the great advise and
discussions on this list.
Now to the point. About two months ago, Sho-Sho, one of
our cats, and I were feeding the fish ( 4 loaches, 10 Cory
Serbea, 7 SAEs, 2 clown placo and a zebra placo ) in her,
the cats, favorite tank, a heavily planted 30 gal. When I
turned my attention to pruning the plants, Sho-Sho decided
the fish must still be hungry, and dumped the cup with 1/2
oz portion of Blackworms in the tank. Of coarse the fish
were delighted, and the cat was happy that the fish were so
active.
Now I had always been told not to overfeed worms since
the excess would burrough into the substrate and die, thus
fouling the tank. So I immediatly set about tring to get the
excess out. I knew I was not successful by the amount of
worms that I could see in the substrate at the front of the
tank.
I decided that I would monitor the tank closely and do
water changes to prevent the tank from fouling. Well the
long and short of it is that the ammonia, nitrites, and
nitrates never changed.
I know some of the worms survived. I see them in the
AM, before the lights come on in the hood, in the substrate
at the front of the tank. They soon disappear, guess they
don't like the light.
The only down side that I have seen so far is that they
(the worms) seem to congregate under the intake to my
filter. I assume that particals of food, plant material,
ect. are drawn to this spot by the water flow. The problem
here is that as soon as the loaches or the placos find them,
a feeding frenzie starts. Four loaches and three placos
sifting through the sand creates a lot of free floating
debris in the water, which goes right up the intake to the
filter.
I tried moving the intake and this solved the problem
for about 10 days. The fish soon found the worms again and
it is back to changing the filter media again.
I'm presently setting up some additional breeder tanks
and intend to try introducing a culture of worms into the
substrate. I hope to have some definitive and monitored
information available.
Please don't try this on a well established tank that
you aren't willing to redo.
Hope this is of help to you.
Doug Underwood
....In Oregon were we had two days of sunshine and are now
back to normal. Cloudy and rainy.....