Fully aquatic earthworms FOUND. Any info on breeding?

[knifegill]

i have found a worm in my tank that has been living for a very long time

I believe it was your thread that got me on the lookout for these guys! Any earthworm they gets left in my tanks is dead the next day, in spite of water parameters being 0,0, +/- 20. So either my tanks are too warm or the species of terrestrial annelids around here can't make the transition to aquatic life. I'm stoked to possibly be on the trail of some that thrive and may even breed in a gravelly setup.

For something that big... you'd go broke feeding blackworms. I'd try other stuff like tilapia fillets. I don't think small worms would be the natural diet for your 3' fish. BTW, what kind of fish is it? Pima or really old Arrowana or something else?

Right, but for variety of feed with lack of decaying matter, earthworms that can live in the gravel are amazing. Just think of the general community with blackworms colonizing the gravel and macro-size it. See how useful these worms could be to aquarists with larger predators?

I don't have a 3' fish. I'm just thinking monster, here.

AHAHAHAHAHAAHHAAH I WAS RIGHT!!!!! Funny I was just reading my thread on aquatic worms. >

So you're going to make me pore through your threads to find out what's so funny. Alright, I'll bite.

EDIT: Found it and posted there. Yeah, it was your thread, not the other poster's I was thinking of.

 

[knifegill]

Well, I've got them in a 5g with aeration and gravel. It had daphnia breeding in it so there's already algae in there. Now for the tricky part:

When an article states that these worms do well in 'bad' water conditions, which parameters are they letting slide? I doubt they mean ammonia-ridden water, but I'd hate to try a HOB and have the water be too pristine for them to breed. So what in the world do people mean by 'bad' conditions and happy worms?

 

[knifegill]

*bonk for intel on the right kind of nasty.*

 

[BigO6687]

i remember seeing tons of these in a park near me where they have a manmade stream leading to a pond, i haven't been there for several years, but I might go check it out and get pics sometime

 

[knifegill]

Right on! Any idea about what kind of pollutants they like? This feels like blasphemy.

 

[fishjude78]

For something that big... you'd go broke feeding blackworms. I'd try other stuff like tilapia fillets. I don't think small worms would be the natural diet for your 3' fish. BTW, what kind of fish is it? Pima or really old Arrowana or something else?

lmao, knifegill was being sarcastic, he knows a 3' fish would require a whole bunch of blackworms!

 

[knifegill]

Yeah, I was making that point. No big deal that it got missed. Heck, I wouldn't expect a 3' fish to even notice a single blackworm unless I held it in my fingers.

 

[knifegill]

Note the adapted tail segments.

 

[Raetak]

That looks to be exactly what I had, possibly not but very close at least.

 

[knifegill]

I just went back there on a whim and found intermediate-sized worms of what look to be the same species (I am not getting that picky about these guys as long as they breed!) and also found what I first thought were little white nematodes. But I kept digging and flipping and noticed a trend of darker color on larger worms. Didn't take me too long to (hopefully correctly) suspect that these white worms, which are definitely annelids on closer inspection, are likely to be young of the type I'm trying to breed. I scooped a good fifty of different size and color and, sure enough, it seems I'm looking at juvenile to adult changes in one species. If I'm wrong, I'll have two species in the same tank. Oh, well. There aren't that many species of parasitic annelid so I'm not terribly concerned as long as they eventually become a renewable source of food.