will uneaten blackworms harm my tank?

[MouldyMilk]

so... my hand slipped when feeding the tanks and i dumped 5 tanks worth of blackworms in to the first tank, and it was a small tank (27L)... in that particular tank, i only have shrimps, about 15 harlequin rasboras, 2 otosinclus and plants. it happened half an hour ago. now all the blackworms have buried themselves into the substrate. do i need to worry? will they cause issues in the tank?

 

[Essjay]

I take it they were live worms? Are they likely to thrive in the substrate and start a colony? I've never used live blackworms.

What is the substrate? If you have just gravel, you could try siphoning out as many as possible, but with sand or a plant substrate you can't do that.

 

[MouldyMilk]

I take it they were live worms? Are they likely to thrive in the substrate and start a colony? I've never used live blackworms.

What is the substrate? If you have just gravel, you could try siphoning out as many as possible, but with sand or a plant substrate you can't do that.

yes live blackworms. i have about 3/4 aquasoil and 1/4 gravel. i'm not worried about them dying in there. i worry if they do too well they might out compete the live stock in some way, like using up O2 or something?

 

[Essjay]

There shouldn't be a problem from that aspect, just if they go mad and you end up with a tank full of them

 

[10 Tanks]

so... my hand slipped when feeding the tanks and i dumped 5 tanks worth of blackworms in to the first tank, and it was a small tank (27L)... in that particular tank, i only have shrimps, about 15 harlequin rasboras, 2 otosinclus and plants. it happened half an hour ago. now all the blackworms have buried themselves into the substrate. do i need to worry? will they cause issues in the tank?

Hello MouldyMilk. Can't imagine keeping anything in such a small amount of water. But, just increase your water changes and you'll remove the dissolved waste material from the worms.

10 Tanks (Now 11)

 

[WhistlingBadger]

Yes, that is a tiny tank, probably too small for the fish you're keeping. But the worms shouldn't hurt a thing. They'll probably settle in, breed, and eventually the fish will eat them to extinction.

 

[MouldyMilk]

i find it amusing how people are just so sure there's no way a 27L can be understocked. for that particular tank, i used to not do any water change and in 4 months its NO3 levels went down from ~50ppm to ~30ppm. i only started doing water change again because the plants in there don't use as much phosphate and phosphate ended up testing a bit high. stop looking for outrage. this isn't twitter.

 

[Colin_T]

Live blackworms are fine in aquariums. They live in the substrate and feed on rotting organic matter.

 

[WhistlingBadger]

i find it amusing how people are just so sure there's no way a 27L can be understocked. for that particular tank, i used to not do any water change and in 4 months its NO3 levels went down from ~50ppm to ~30ppm. i only started doing water change again because the plants in there don't use as much phosphate and phosphate ended up testing a bit high. stop looking for outrage. this isn't twitter.

Take it easy. Nobody's getting outraged, just giving you some friendly suggestions. Aquarium advice is what we do here, and we tend to assume that new members are relatively inexperienced and might not know these things. If you decide the advice doesn't apply to you, that's your call.