FH's diet, OK or not?

[we4wieners]

Can I dig an earthworm out of my yard, clean it up, and fed it to my FH?
If so..will it mess up the tanks parameters? will he eat the whole thing or should I chop it up? any ideas?
I am feeding him pellets (ching,hikari, omega one) and b-worms. I am wondering if he is getting bored with his food.
He still eats like a pig, but picky. Wont eat freeze dried krill, market shrimp, tilapia...so on. Is he a wussy eater?

 

[Chicklette]

If you do not use pesticides you can give them worms. No it won't, just do your weekly cleaning and it will be fine. They just gobble the whole thing up. He should be gobbling all that stuff up so Im guessing he's a picky eater. Mine eats everything. You should try cichlid crisps, they go NUTS for that stuff, all my fish do.

 

[we4wieners]

I'll try that also. Thanks!

 

[fishbum]

There are so many prepared foods for fish,why risk feeding something as expensive as a FH live food? It may not hurt,but it may kill it. Not worth it IMO.

 

[H]-[H]

Because prepared food will always lack some nutrients compared to live..
It's like eating canned food vs cooking them fresh..
& I'm sure OP is well aware of pesticides, if there's any since it's his garden..
If still worried of pesticides, put the feeders in a container to quarantine for a few days & see if they live..

*Rule of the thumb is, when in doubt, don't feed..

 

[mattk1023]

i feed my fh worms all the time.i get them from my parents yard where i know there's no pesticides.i made an electric worm poker with a grounding rod u bolted to a 4 ft piece of 1" pvc.i hooked the the positve wire to the rod taped off the rest.stick it in the ground youll get 100 worms in 5 mins

 

[we4wieners]

Thank you guys.

 

[tooth517]

It sucks where I live, I'm surrounded by crop fields on three sides so I don't dare feed the crawlers from my yard. It can be a very inexpensive and nutritious treat if you can be sure they are safe!!

 

[RD.]

Because prepared food will always lack some nutrients compared to live..

Could you give some examples of exactly what nutrients those would be?

I haven't fed live or frozen in over a decade, so I would be very interested in knowing exactly what nutrients my fish are supposedly missing out on.

Not knocking those who do feed live/frozen, just stating that you don't have to, unless someone feels they can answer my question above.

 

[BIG_ONE]

I would not recommend you go digging something in your backyard and feed it to your fish no matter how clean you think they are.
Even if it doesn't want to eat freeze dried krill, I myself don't even feed them any freeze dried food. I try to avoid all freeze dried food if possible. I only feed them frozen krill if I was to feed mines krill.
But being a NLS(New Life Spectrum) fan. I don't really rotate my food much at all, NLS is highly packed. The pellets that you mentioned would be fine. Rotating the food is ideal, but some how I kind of notice that the result is still kind of the same. Only a few FH I've seen that actually have changes from its siblings from rotating food while it's sibling doesn't get much varieties at all. But playing by varieties of food may make a change to your fish. Don't worry too much about it.