Can feeding live earthworms introduce bacteria?
- Thread starter BloodThirsty28
- Start date
If you do take them from the garden, then id suggest boiling the worms first, that should get rid of all parasites and bacteria. Then all you do is take a scalpel cut the worm down the middle and scrape out the dirt they have ingested.
slice, add butter, parsley and a nice salad and away you go......erm ignore that
slice, add butter, parsley and a nice salad and away you go......erm ignore that
My husband feeds those to the fire eel and there haven't been any problems yet. (Knock on wood)
Cath
Cath
DarkEntity said:
i hope you dont do that...
most people only feed earthworms to fish that wont eat dead things or pellets. killing the earthworms kind of defeats the point of feeding earthworms. earthworms arent particularly nutritious so i cant think of any other reason to feed them.
also, boiling the worm long enough to kill internal parasites would definitely denature the proteins that give the fish nutrition. that would make it harder to digest and nutritionally useless for the most part.
also, cutting it open is just ridiculous. are there any fish that eat a dead cut open worm that dont eat flake food? or at least frozen bloodworms?
I fed my oscar worms from the bait shop and from my own yard. I know my yard didnt have any pesticides and Im hoping the worm farm wouldnt either. I would drop 2 in a small container/tupperware bowl with some warm water and leave them for a minute or 2. This rinsed them off and I remember someone saying the warm water made them excrete their waste so thats taken care of before you feed them to your fish. I used them for 2/3 years when I had an oscar & dempsey and never had any problems. They just shouldnt be used as a staple food, only as "treats" or every now and then. And if you get some from the bait shop keep them in the fridge, they'll be good for a couple weeks.
Boiling them then cutting them open seems completely rediculous.
Boiling them then cutting them open seems completely rediculous.
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I think the idea was just to make sure that there where no parasites/bacteria that could get passed onto the fish. But now that you mention the word ‘frozen’ I would think you could freeze the worm into a ‘wormy ice-cube’ and that would probably kill just about anything. I still don’t think I would risk lawn worms though. Pesticides can stay in tissue for a long time, and since you can’t track a worm (or at least it would be silly to do so) you never know where it might have been.travis said: