# garden worms



## emma008 (Jan 28, 2012)

This sounds crazy, but can you feed freshwater fish with earth worms collected from your garden?


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## BillD (Jun 5, 2006)

yes you can. they are an excellent food. Easy to grow indoors if you use redworms, available from vermicomposting establishments.


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## AquaNekoMobile (Feb 26, 2010)

Red Wigglers are the composting worms. You can find them for sale in Toronto and online (GTA). 

It is about $25 for 1/2lb of worms IIRC. That is something like I think 400-500 worms. The worms are about length of your pinky finger and as thick as about 2 ball point pen ink tubes.

They eat organic scraps like kitchen scraps (sans citrus fruits) and an eat up to thier body weight in a day. They will double in population about every 3-5 months pending how well you feed and care for them. 

A note, they 'self regulate' themselves to thier enviroment/housing. If the bin you have them in can support like ~2000ish worms then the worms will stop reproducing when they feel they've filled up the space to support thier population/resources. Now if only humans did that more. 

It's also a good way to have the worms eat up any private and sensitive personal data if you shred it up.


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## vrb th hrb (Feb 20, 2010)

my dad used to feed earthworms to his tin foil barbs


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## Juiceworld (Dec 13, 2010)

Do you need to cut them up or just throw them in whole?


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## BillD (Jun 5, 2006)

Depends on the size of the fish and the size of the worms as to whether they need to be cut up.


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## characinfan (Dec 24, 2008)

Red wigglers (composting worms) and earthworms are not the same! Not all fish like red wigglers. Earthworms are a lot more palatable.

I have a vermicomposter and I put a live red wiggler in my tank to see if my fish would be interested in it. It thrived for 2 weeks, completely ignored, at which point it went back in the composter.

---

+ 1 on the shredded personal data.  I do that, too.


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## BillD (Jun 5, 2006)

Red wigglers are in fact earthworms, and listed in your second link from the U of G. My fish ate them eagerly, when I had them.


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## emma008 (Jan 28, 2012)

$25 is expensive for worms. I was thinking about digging up a couple of worms from my backyard. Can you drop the worm whole or do I need to cut it up in pieces?


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## Tropicana (Feb 15, 2009)

emma008 said:


> $25 is expensive for worms. I was thinking about digging up a couple of worms from my backyard. Can you drop the worm whole or do I need to cut it up in pieces?


25$ is really cheap for 400-500 worms actually. since a dozen dew worms(which are larger) is around 5$.

If your fish are small make sure you cut the worms up to be smaller then bite size. If you have Oscars or like peacock bass then whole is fine.


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## characinfan (Dec 24, 2008)

BillD said:


> Red wigglers are in fact earthworms, and listed in your second link from the U of G. My fish ate them eagerly, when I had them.


That is true, but most earthworms (especially _Lumbricus_) don't taste or smell as gross as red wigglers. Red wigglers' Latin species name, _foetida_ (fetid = stinky) is there for a reason.

(No, I haven't tasted them personally! Some fish are picky eaters, though, so if they reject red wigglers, don't let that stop you from trying to feed them other worms).


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## AquaNekoMobile (Feb 26, 2010)

emma008 said:


> $25 is expensive for worms. I was thinking about digging up a couple of worms from my backyard. Can you drop the worm whole or do I need to cut it up in pieces?


Well yes and no on that. They can double in population size in approx. 2-3 months so that 400-500 can be almost 1000 worms pending how many worms you feed your fish. When I had my little american toad she inhaled like 3-4 worms a day.

Also you're not spending extra money to feed the worms to feed your fish. What I mean is when you make dinner you'll have left over kitchen scraps. You just roughly chop them up and feed to the worms and the worms will in return convert the kitchen scraps into very rich compost for plants and also reproduce to give you more worms over time.


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