Dried Bloodworm

[Ady Bowers]

Can anyone recommend a good quality dried bloodworm.

Thanks.

 

[The603]

Welcome to the forum, my fish gobble up Omega One freeze dried bloodworms.

 

[Byron]

First, bloodworms are not a food for regular feeding. They are not good nutrition, and should only be fed once a week. Second point, the freeze dried are not really safe, they need soaking in tank water well before feeding, otherwise they can swell up inside the fish.

I used to feed frozen bloodworms, and more regularly, until a couple of marine biologists said they were not good, and I switched. Frozen daphnia, frozen shrimp are good, but prepared foods that are of high quality are quite excellent nourishment.

 

[GaryE]

When I could use frozen or freeze dried bloodworms, they were great. I am now allergic to them, a common problem from using them a lot. There's a protein in them that bothers people, not fish.

They have a good nutritional profile - high in protein and fibre. They are a freshwater food, so not marine as @Byron notes. I find these fly larvae (they aren't really worms) in my outdoor daphnia cultures all summer long, and they are a good food source.

I don't understand the myths about freeze dried foods. I used them for decades, and they never swelled up inside any fish that I could see. They went in and traveled through like any other food. I keep reading online that one of my favourite fry foods, decapsulated brine shrimp eggs, are supposed to be fatal to young fish. I've never had a fish harmed by them either, and I have raised a lot of really good ones with that as a supplement for the days when I can't hatch live.

Freeze dried tubifex were a staple, cheap and available in the hobby for years, and I heard the exact same critique about them.

The myth probably took root when herbivore Malawi Cichlids became super popular, in the 1980s. In their case, insect foods were bad, as they have a digestive system evolved to process higher roughage plant based foods. You don't feed lamb to a cow.

So I would ignore it. If I could use freeze dried bloodworms, I'd buy them. What brand? I don't think it matters in the least. They're probably bought from jobbers and put in containers with brand names on them.