Earthworms – a very short article, but not the least important. It is dedicated to the well-known earthworms. They can be an excellent addition to the diet of your aquarium fish on a par with the trumpet fish, which we talked about in the last article.
Class: Belt worms
On the territory of our country there are about fifty species of earthworms. These creatures are hermaphroditic. They reproduce sexually. They lay cocoons, each of which gives life to ten to twelve small worms.
Earthworms live in moist soil rich in mulch, over-fermented leaves and other organic residues.
When it rains, they crawl to the surface. This is why they are often called rainmakers. They are more often seen after it rains. In fact, these worms live in the ground and are therefore earthworms.
This feature makes harvesting earthworms very easy. Even in the city it is enough to go outside after a warm summer rain and you can collect them directly from the asphalt, without resorting to any technical tricks.
If the weather stays dry for a long time, it is advisable to set up a feeder for earthworms.
Where do you get them in the city?
It is easier to arrange this if you live in the countryside. But in the city you can also find a suitable plot of land for setting up a worm farm. The earth should be well digged so that it is loose enough. When digging it can be mixed with a certain amount of humus, fallen leaves, straw. You can also use pokers from apples, cabbage, potato peelings.
When in this way you treat the allotted area for the worm farm, it should be abundantly watered. In the future, you should make sure that the land does not dry out. To do this, it should be periodically watered. This is especially important in dry weather. Sometimes it is necessary to water two or three times a day. Therefore, when choosing a place for our purposes, it is desirable to choose one that would be shaded by a tree or a nearby building.
Now, when you find it necessary to please your fish with a tasty worm, go to the worm farm you have set up and dig up a sufficient amount of provisions. You can also add an additional portion of organic residues to the soil right away.
Stocking up for winter
Before winter comes, you can stock up on some earthworms. Collected worms, placed in wet canvas bags, can be stored for months. The main thing is not to overheat and do not let them freeze.
It is easier to prevent the death of worms if you keep them not in canvas bags, but in a wooden box filled with sand, sawdust from deciduous trees, fallen leaves mixed with turf. Periodically, worms can be fed with milk, cornmeal, white bread.
Is a worm truss possible?
It would be tempting to set up a worm farm for winter like the one we described above. But, unfortunately, this is unlikely to be a good idea. First of all, in the summer on the patch that we watered, all the number of earthworms that we managed to collect did not breed in that place. Our farm was just an oasis for these creatures, attracting them from surrounding areas. In addition, to get an earthworm to reproduce under artificial conditions, you have to overcome its annual cycles developed over thousands of years.
Well, maybe I’m overreacting. They breed the red Californian worm for processing household waste into fertilizer. And our native domestic earthworm, what’s worse?
But then, a sufficient area for such a farm is likely to be needed. This area should be filled with substrate rich in earthworm food. The plantation will have to be heated in winter.
I can’t recommend you anything more sensible at the moment. Maybe one of the readers of the site has information of this kind and will share it with us.
Earthworms Preparation for fish feeding
It is not allowed to give fish just taken out of the ground. It should be kept for two to three days to free the intestines from toxins. After that, it should be rinsed in running water from mucus. Now you can feed the fish. Of course, not for all aquarium fish will be suitable for such a fatty piece.
The earthworm will be to the taste, first of all large fish, such as cichlids, all varieties of goldfish, astronotus. You can feed earthworms and small fish, but before feeding them will need to be finely cut with a blade, scissors or a special cutter. Sometimes especially large worms should be cut into several pieces before giving them to even relatively large fish.
One video showed earthworms escaping from some household detergent. This way of extracting earthworms should never be used. First of all, earthworms extracted in this way can be toxic to fish. In the second, household chemicals poison the environment for more than one day. Earthworms, as well as other animals and insects living in the ground, are very useful organisms for nature. And we should not poison their natural habitat with products of our chemical industry. Nature with great difficulty, very slowly neutralizes their harmful effects.
Here we are, expanding the menu for our aquarium fish. I think many of them will like earthworms. Next time we will talk about such treats as mosquito larvae 😉