keeping blackworms in an aquarium?

So right now I keep my blackworms in the fridge in a shallow amount of water. However, I have been wanting to buy a larger quantity and was wondering why I can't keep them in an aquarium of their own? So when they are in the fridge they are supposed to be in shallow water so that they can get their heads out, however, they can live in my aquariums it seems like for months at a time with up to 12" of water if I don't clean them out. Now I know that you don't want to leave them in an aquarium with newts in case they all die and foul the water, but shouldn't I be able to keep them in their own aquarium with a filter that doesn't suck off the bottom? I've never read about anyone doing this so I thought I would ask and see if there is some sort of problem with it. Also what do you feed blackworms?

Oops, I'm sorry does this need to be in the specific blackworm catagory?

I used to feed blackworms regularly to my C.O. If you do some digging you would find my old post about blackworm escapees and well, long story short, yes the blackworms lived in my tank for about 1-1 and a 1/2 months before I stopped noticing them squiggling around. This could very well be due to my C.O. eating all of them. Another problem is that the blackworms often venture to unaccessible regions of the aquarium. Its better to feed them as you need them in my opinion. I sometimes feed blackworms to my C.O. as a writhing mass in a spoon while they are on land. All in all, I don't think you are going to get your moneys worth by releasing them.

It also depends on the substrate. If you have a very fine sandy substrate without too many rocks for them to hide in, I think that you can do it with moderate success. Anything with small pebbles to pea sized gravel provide too many holes and escape routes for the worms. If you have a bare bottom tank, then you can probably do it with ease.

Another note is to take into consideration the aquatic plants. If you have java moss you will always seem to have some lingering in it. Also, don't ask me how but the worms always seem to find their way into any floating plants you have and my C.O. could be seen "Shaking Down" the water lettuce to get the blackworms.

This may be too much info to absorb at once, but I thought I'd just share my experience

Well, I'm thinking of keeping the blackworms by themselves in a bare bottomed aqaurium and I want to know if they can live and breed like that?

You can indeed try to culture black worms yourself though I have heard from many people that the doubling rate is quite slow. According to one site I just read it is normally between 3-4 weeks. It can be very difficult to get a culture that you can harvest animals from without depleting it depending upon the number of animals you have.

A quick Google search for "culturing black worms" turned up these handy articles here and here that you could use for setting up this aquarium.

To answer a few of your questions right here, laboratories often use brown paper towels (low processing and not bleached) as a food source and substrate. When these decompose they start a small food chain with microfauna that the worms can eat. The first website I linked suggests that this is problematic for harvesting the worms and recommends trying burlap. Sinking fish foods may also be used as food but it is very important to not overfeed and foul the aquarium water. The above mentioned sites also recommend not using more than 2-3 inches of water and to use an airstone. When my school was culturing black worms they used 12"-16" dishtubs to keep the worms in. I would imagine sweater boxes or rubber maid bins would also work quite well and they wouldn't have the wasted space of a 10 gallon aquarium.

Hopefully that helps you out!

Blackworms definitely need some kind of substrate - pebbles, sand, paper towels, burlap, something that they can wrap themselves around.

Thanks for the responses! Those sites were really helpful, Abrahm!

Do I need to clean the burlap somehow? Wash it in hot water or something?

Before I make a new thread, let me ask here.

I want to buy some blackworms and throw them in my tank. The tank is full of live plants, snails, 2 shrimp, and soon to be 5 babie Alps. I want an whole ecosystem going. The substrate is cocofiber, gravel, and playsand. Would it be okay to do this or would they die in the soil, eat the plant roots, what?

Hi Rav, The blackworms will thrive quite happily. In fact, the cocofiber may provide food for them; I know they love to eat corkbark, so I think they'll eat the cocofiber. They won't hurt the plants.

The only thing to watch out for is not putting too many of them in the tank. They are living things and increase the bioload (i.e., waste products) of the tank, just like any animal would. And since they have a nice substrate to live in, they will rarely be eaten by the newts; they'll just live there.

Hello Jenn, thanks for the help! Saying that they would eat the coco fiber gives me tons of second thoughts. I know I have it as the substrate, but also as the background, I hate for them to start eating away the scenery!

The bioload isnt too much of a worry as I have to do 30% water changes a week just cause the plants need the fresh water. Id hate to buy some though and they arent eaten by the newts. Theyre still babies and not digging or anything for their food. So I may have to think harder on this whole idea.