Feeding fish earthworms

[ford130]

Can I just confirm my thinking is right with this. You can just go out in your backyard (UK) dig up a bunch of earthworms clean off the dirt and feed them to your fish?

I have Cichlids mainly Oscar, Jack Dempsey, Firemouth.

Does anyone in the UK do this? Do you chop up the bigger ones?

Anyone in the UK built an earthworm farm to feed their fish. Fed up of paying £2 for a small bag of bloodworms and want to give my fish live food but not feeder fish.

 

[Jayzao]

As long as you do not use pesticides or lawn treatments that could potentially poison your fish I would say this is alright.
I feed my fish bait earthworms and feeder worms as well without issue.

 

[Carefree_Dude]

depends. if the ground is clean, and has no waste or chemical runoff it should be fine. Otherwise, you risk poisoning your fish.

 

[inssane]

No fertilizer/chemicals and you should be fine.
Make a small compost pile and they will be plentiful.

 

[Dr_Shakalu]

No fertilizer/chemicals and you should be fine.
Make a small compost pile and they will be plentiful.

I used to feed my fish worms that I bought at Petco. I would add them to my compost pile. I also added any vegetable trimmings to the compost pile to gut load them and add more nutrition to the worms and clear out some of the compost soil. Hope this helps, The Doctor

 

[Carefree_Dude]

could you put the compost pile ontop of like, say one of those large plastic round sleds, in order to stop worms from leaving?

 

[bigbadfish711]

depends. if the ground is clean, and has no waste or chemical runoff it should be fine. Otherwise, you risk poisoning your fish.

As long as you do not use pesticides or lawn treatments that could potentially poison your fish I would say this is alright.
I feed my fish bait earthworms and feeder worms as well without issue.

No fertilizer/chemicals and you should be fine.
Make a small compost pile and they will be plentiful.

Like stated above. Just make sure that the soil has not been contaminated with any chemicals or fertilizer and it should be fine. I get night crawlers from the bait shop for cheap. I just would not trust the soil where I live.

 

[Carefree_Dude]

if you really want to make sure they are healthy, you can get a small aquarium, and fill with soil. Keep your worms in there, and gutload them all kinds of goodies. Just keep a lid on it, because it will stink. if you're bored, you could actually raise worms.

 

[ford130]

Thanks for all the info, very helpful. I guess earthworms are the same on either side of the Atlantic. I've heard a lot of people mention night crawlers, what are these not something I've heard of in the UK

How often would you feed the earthworms to your fish? Once a week or more often?

 

[mdblo3]

could you put the compost pile ontop of like, say one of those large plastic round sleds, in order to stop worms from leaving?

Earthworms (at least what we call earthworms in US) don't eat fruit and veggie compost. BUT, red wigglers do. Red wigglers are much like earthworms, but smaller, more redish in color, and have lots of fine rib lines. If you start a red wiggler colony in a compost pile, RWs will stay there as long as the food source is sustained. They love fruit and veggie scraps and compost materials. They will reproduce like mad if feed and kept warm - making lots of free food for your fish. The disadvantage to RW grown this way is that they are a pain to clean IMO - meaning, I never wanted to introduce the decaying fruit and veggie matter that are coated with into my fish tank so I had to rinse them first.