# Frozen or freeze dried bloodworms?



## Grimmjow

Is one better than the other?


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## adiumroot

Depends on what you're going to feed it to. I've heard the freeze-dried variety takes on air and isn't recommended for fancy goldfish. But for other fish, I think it's probably the same thing.

Here where I am, frozen is cheaper than freeze-dried so I go for frozen. The disadvantage is that you have to keep it in your freezer.


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## aunt kymmie

Actually, the freeze dried takes on water so you need to thoroughly rehydrate before feeding, or you risk overfeeding and bloat as far as your fish are concerned. My fish will eat both but prefer the frozen. When I do feed freeze dried foods I soak it in a cup of tank water until I know that the food has completely absorbed all the water it can take on.


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## Grimmjow

Ill prolly go with the frozen, I did some reading and saw that the dust on the freeze dried shouldnt be inhaled and Im definitely not going to touch them either way.

The kids of fish I have are
Bettas
Guppies
Neon, black skirt, and some black kinda of tetras
Some blueish silver gauramis
Tiger barbs
Clown loaches
Zebra danios
And 2 that look like neon tetras but have a greenish yellow stripe above a black stripe and they are like 3 inches

If any of those wouldnt like bloodworms.


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## kelly528

Never used freeze-dried, never would. All I feed are pellets, frozen and fresh/live. Freeze-dried has a lower nutritional value than any of the (high quality, to be fair) feeds I use so I don't bother with it.

All the above fish should like bloodworms, you can also try brine shrimp, daphnia, mysis shrimp, tubifex worms or krill if you are feeling adventurous.


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## adiumroot

My tiger barbs go crazy whenever I feed them bloodworms. They flip out and inhale the worms like no tomorrow. LOL

Bettas also love them. It's close to what they really eat in the wild plus bloodworms and mosquito larva are good for conditioning bettas for breeding.


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## Angel079

For the fish you have, they'll love bloodworms. Frozen is what I use too, thaw it out in li cup tank water and you're all set.


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## Grimmjow

I just went and bought some frozen ones, i got a plastic cup to like thaw them out in but how would i go about breaking pieces off, just try to snap a chunk? I bought the hikari brand ones but ithought they came in cubes but i guess its just like a slab.


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## Angel079

Just use a sharp knife and cut chunks off (half inch square should about do it for feeding a normal stocked tank). Just keep your finger away & safe while cutting!


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## Grimmjow

Well i may have let them sit out for a little bit and they thawed a little and some of the juice dripped onto my cats scratching post, should i just throw it out?


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## Freddy

Not sure about the scratching post. But my fish LOVE frozen bloodworms. Freeze dried, well, not so much. But I'm experimenting and seeing how they like live whiteworms. Maybe if I had a feeder cone it would work better... If you're only going to use bloodworms, there's a way to culture them, but it won't work in the winter and you risk getting eaten alive by the mosquitoes who lay the eggs! You could try whiteworms for the little fish you have, they're pretty easy to keep a culture going, and make lots of baby worms FAST, once the culture gets going. Good luck!


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## rsheets

OK, so the freeze dried ones swell up after they eat them? Why wouldn't they put that on the container? Mine doesn't say anything about that. How long to soak?


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## Freddy

By request of Angel079, I'm going to post about how to culture live whiteworms.

There are several steps.

Step 1: Buy a culture. You can get one from a friend who has an existing culture, or buy it online. None of my LFS have whiteworms, but maybe yours does.

Step 2: Put the worms where you want them. You should have peat or something similar, pretty much any dirt will work as long as it doesn't have any chemicals in it and is moist to damp, but NOT wet. Put the soil in a container, I use a ziploc container, but the walls don't seem to be high enough. It's easiest to harvest the worms from the walls.Once you have put the worms in, spritz the culture with water until it is considerably moist. Have a lid. Poke holes in the lid, and make sure the lid is tight-fitting. Just don't make the holes too big, or worms will crawl out and/or mites will come in and invade the culture, and you will have to salvage some worms and start a new culture.

Step 3: Feed the culture. Bread soaked in milk is excellent food, and when the culture is at the "harvesting stage", you can feed them a little meat, so the fish get protein. Just don't overfeed. In the first few weeks, the culture will not eat all of the food, and it will become moldy. Remove it after about 5 days, and replace it.

Step 4: Harvesting stage. When the worms finish the bread before it becomes moldy, your culture is at the harvesting stage. Your culture should be swarming with worms all over the bread now. Now, add some more bread, with meat underneath. I used turkey breast, deli sliced, and I shredded it with my hands. You don't need much. You can now harvest some worms, but leave the majority. This step is usually about 5-6 weeks into caring for your culture.

Step 5: Daily harvesting. This is an aged culture. You can now give cultures to friends, or sell cultures online, with a portion of the worms from your culture. Don't actually harvest daily, harvest about once every 3 days. Eventually you can harvest every 2 days, but don't do that until your culture is well aged.
Consider buying a feeder cone for your fish. Worms can only poke out of the slots, waving in the water until your fish snatch them up! Discus especially love these.

Your culture is now perfectly aged! You can now regularly harvest and feed to fish. You can also start new cultures for yourself, and feed huge numbers of small fish, which is good if you're a breeder. Good luck to all who try this!


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## Angel079

How big do they get? 
What fish have you offered these to so far that'll eat them?


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## Freddy

My black ghost knife fish eat them, and I bet my kissing gouramis would, they're scared of my hand, but they try to get the freeze dried bloodworms.

The worms get to be about 1 cm, more or less.


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## stephanieleah

How much do you feed your fish? btw I've always just dropped a frozen cube in and let them go at it. I've only done it before water changes because most of it ends up on the gravel. I wait a few hours then vaccuum it up. My danios have a hard time eating the whole bits so I should dice them.

So I have about 4 leopard danios and 6 black skirt tetras and three yo yo loaches. Feeding quantity recommendations? Half a cube?


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## Freddy

Not sure. My 2 black ghost knife fish eat about 2 cubes, but I normally feed them 1. Since your fish are little, I would say 1/2 to 1 cube should be good. The BGKs also look around in the gravel at night for any food that escaped them the first time around. With the pleco and kissing gouramis, there's no food to vacuum up! (and my tank is way too small for these fish - I'm giving them to a LFS soon, hopefully.)


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## Grimmjow

So I found out that bloodworms drive my tetras and danios insane, most of the others didnt really care but i think the gauramis didnt go for them cause they looked very close to their poo strands they are forever dropping.


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## Angel079

stephanieleah said:


> How much do you feed your fish? btw I've always just dropped a frozen cube in and let them go at it. I've only done it before water changes because most of it ends up on the gravel. I wait a few hours then vaccuum it up. My danios have a hard time eating the whole bits so I should dice them.
> 
> So I have about 4 leopard danios and 6 black skirt tetras and three yo yo loaches. Feeding quantity recommendations? Half a cube?


Pls take a lil 1/4 measuring cup or something, add tank water to it and thaw it out first, then give it in the tank. Fish naturally are not used to frozen or fast foods, that's very unnatural and not good to pick it frozen for their lil systems ;-)


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## stephanieleah

Angel079 said:


> Pls take a lil 1/4 measuring cup or something, add tank water to it and thaw it out first, then give it in the tank. Fish naturally are not used to frozen or fast foods, that's very unnatural and not good to pick it frozen for their lil systems ;-)


Good idea, will do.


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## iamntbatman

I definitely prefer frozen. It's much quicker to thaw frozen worms than to rehydrate freeze-dried ones.

Are semi-frozen foods really all that bad for your fish? I ask because this is generally how I feed them: for most of my fish, I use an eyedropper to suck up a bunch of thawed worms out of the shotglass and squirt it in their direction. As others noted, bloodworms are pretty much like fishy catnip or something because every fish I've ever owned absolutely loves them. So plenty of worms hit the floor but the fish track them all down and eat them after just a few minutes.

The thing is, my badis badis are really bad at eating bloodworms. As I put some in the tank, they'll wait patiently and snap up single worms as they float by but they won't go after the ones that float past them, which usually means the danios get all of those. They seem to do better when I put small frozen chunks directly in the tank. The fish grab the chunks whole and run off with them, and slowly swallow them as they thaw. They definitely get a lot more to eat this way.


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