Frozen Bloodworm - Question

[newfishaddict]

so cute a square out and just put it in

NO! you need to rinse them very very well before you put them in the tank. I use a small steal strainer under warm tap water.

The carbon in you filter will be rendered ineffective much faster if you don’t rinse the bloodworms.

I dont worry about the small level of chloramine in my tap water, the slimy coating my the worms will react with, and break down, the chloramine.

ha ha listen to yoursleves
think with all the wonderful things science has brought us
they clean them gamma ray them and flash freeze them to kill all the nasty impuritys i think live ones contain more germs and stuff
in a nut shell if you want to feed all your fish with them just chuck the cube in and let them munch out if you want to feed just one i find with feeding my frog its best to put the cube in an old cup half full of your tanks water let the cube defrost in there anduse a basting stick you can get a nice one out of most cooking shops for bout a 5er

If you read my reasons for rinsing you will see they have nothing to do with microorganisms...

the main point with rinsing is to remove any organic wastes on the bloodworms that the fish will not eat, I am not too concerned with microorganisms on the frozen foods....

"kill impurities" certainly this is not possible, but I do know what you mean....

I have taken the "sterile" frozen foods by hikari to my lab to test, they were not sterile but pretty close(~10 cfu/g)

Also, Freezing does not kill microorganisms, an one log reduction at most.....Actually, the faster they are frozen, the more that survive. In the microbiology/genetics lab I do work in, we use -80C freezers to PRESERVE bacteria....

Coliforms have been isolated from Gamma irradiated beef, it is not 100% effective at sterilizing...

And...the packaging is not sturdy enough to maintain the sterility of the product....(the ones I buy have little tiny holes in the foil sometimes)

*Always* defrost your bloodworms before adding them to the tank. Putting it in frozen, even though it melts quickly. is a very bad thing to do. The fish are used to *tropical* temperatures, and the water right around the frozen cube cools down very quickly. The temperature difference when feeding could actually (though it doens't happen noticably often) give your fish a temperature shock. Which simply isn't good on their health.

The way I do it is put the cube in a cup containing a little tap water and let it de-freezing completely. Then use a small fork to fork out the bloodworms and add to the tank.

I like this method as it is easy and you still rinse most of the organic wastes off the frozen food...

 

[rob and vic]

We place frozen food into an eggcup/shot glass, then using an old (and WELL cleaned!) pipette from a testing kit take some water from the tank and fill said cup/glass to cover food. Thaws it in seconds!!!

You can then just suck up the loverly wormy soup with the pipette, and squirt it straight back in the tank! Simple!

Obviously this wont help people who like to rinse it


Just our two penneth

 

[killifish1]

hi tony sos didnt see ya post okies i have done some cheeky people over dere

 

[joss81]

hey

i never realised you had to rinse the bloodworm, i have been feeding them regularly for over a year now, i just hold the cube under the water and let the fish feed from my hand, they are always fed evenly ( no one goes without). this is probably a severely wrong thing to do but i havent had any fatalities from doing so, and my fish seem healthy.

 

[rob and vic]

hey

i never realised you had to rinse the bloodworm, i have been feeding them regularly for over a year now, i just hold the cube under the water and let the fish feed from my hand, they are always fed evenly ( no one goes without). this is probably a severely wrong thing to do but i havent had any fatalities from doing so, and my fish seem healthy.

Hey Joss... We are new, so corroborate anything we say... PLEASE!

But we would just like to address your 'panic'... We suffer the same... "OMG, 'X' says we've done it wrong".

One thing we have learned, is that there are many schools of thought, on many different subjects. No-one is right, no-one is wrong! My God, our heads are absolutely spinning with the different advice we have received. For us, the hardest part of asking for help on ANY forum, is disseminating the information that is appropriate to us. Everyone seems to have a different opinion!

One thing we HAVE learned in taking this info on board... Trust yourself! We have taken great time and reading learning the MAJOR no-no's. As we guess you have... Nitrites, Cycling, etc... Avoid these, and the rest is, well... personal experience. There are some EXTREMELY knowledgeable people floating about. A lot of which reside on these boards.... There are also some *$@"$%&*@£!


As for your post, (as 'our' many)... If we were to reply with the limited knowledge we have, we would say to you... that if - as you say say in your post - you have been using your method for a year with no casualties, then you are probably not doing anything catastrophic!

Personally from what we have read, we are far less worried about 'rinsing', but we do prefer to thaw the foods before introducing. But there you go, that's a personal preference.


At the end of the day, as you say... You've done this for a year, with no casualties... So you are obviously doing nothing majorly[sp] wrong...

I am though, pickling my kidney's with very good Vodka... So I think it shrewd to leave before I get Booted....


HTH's


'Me' and 'Her'

 

[arcticwynta]

Some days I just throw the cubes in frozen other days I put them in a small cup and melt them and other days I have 3 cone shaped feeders that stick on the side of the tank with holes in it I put the blocks in there and let the fish work for it...all depends on my mood.. Sometimes I make frozen pea blocks and put one cube in the middle of these

 

[silverdoller]

hi there i see there are alote of people that feed diff,so here,s what i do,i just push it out and hold it in my hand and gental move it on the top of the water ,i find i like this as the fish get to know you and will eat from your hand in time it a fun way to feed