Sterilizing Blackworms?

[cichlidjedi]

Wondering if anyone has been told similar advice about disinfecting live blackworms before you feed them. I had two fish guys share that they soak their blackworms in milk for about 5 minutes and then rinse them in tap water and feed. They told me it is to kill off many parasites that may be inside or outside of the blackworms. Does anyone else have sucsess with this method? Also is their internal parasites are salamanders may host from feeding blackworms?

 

[sergé]

I wonder if newts in nature have a choice... Of course some blackworms (or the in Europe available Tubifex) is normally found in polluted soils, but I doubt if you can erase for instance toxic things like heavy metals by just giveing them milk baths. Of course flushing them and feeding them something natural so that their intestinse are not filled with dirty mud anymore reduces pollution, but never all.

And I don't think their is need to, unless you feed your animals continously with the same type of food.
I use Tubifex for over 20 years in raising larvae of several newt and salamander species and never had sudden deaths or so, only when I did not wash away the dead worms in between them. And of course I also feed other things like Daphnia and Mosquito larvae (the red ones) but hey..both of these also occur often are caught in polluted water!

 

[SludgeMunkey]

Wondering if anyone has been told similar advice about disinfecting live blackworms before you feed them. I had two fish guys share that they soak their blackworms in milk for about 5 minutes and then rinse them in tap water and feed. They told me it is to kill off many parasites that may be inside or outside of the blackworms. Does anyone else have sucsess with this method? Also is their internal parasites are salamanders may host from feeding blackworms?

Sounds like extra, unnecessary work and a waste of milk...
All blackworms (not to be confused with tubifex) available in North America are farm raised. You may get a few large planaria or a few small leeches in with them. That is about it.

Milk as a disinfectant? I find this so hard to believe.

I would feel safe in betting large sums of money that milk has absolutely no effect on any parasites. In fact, I bet it is less effective than the standard of rinsing the worms off in cold water before serving.

 

[920fish]

To sterilize black worms you would have to used aged water to rinse them. If water from the sink are use without aging or dechlorination the water, the black worms will die and will not wriggle afterward which doesn't produce a natural instance for the pet your feeding to strike at it. I have tested this out and the chlorine will kill your black worms right away.

 

[Ed]

To sterilize black worms you would have to used aged water to rinse them. If water from the sink are use without aging or dechlorination the water, the black worms will die and will not wriggle afterward which doesn't produce a natural instance for the pet your feeding to strike at it. I have tested this out and the chlorine will kill your black worms right away.

This doesn't sterilize the blackworms either.

I've did some google searches and if you trace back the comments on milk and blackworms it seems to have originated with people using milk as a food source and with subsequent posts changing the time to soak and the reason. It looks to be unsupported by any real data (but I only did a short search)....

Ed

 

[Otterwoman]

That is just bizarre!