Earthworms breeding in pond
Comments (17)
catherinet
14 years agoRelated Discussions
No earthworms in Florida???
Comments (107)Sorry, internetiot, ur thread on EW was hijacked but there only so much one can say about them. My suggestion is treat any area u want EWs like one of those EW farms u can purchase to raise worms in, 1) add organic matter (kitchen waste, veggy peelings etc., shredded paper, leaves, grass clippings, etc. 2) if worms don't show up fast enough for u buy some worms. Territorial Seed Co. and other seed companies sell them. "Seed" the area u chose with them. TaDa worms in ur garden. spedigrees, good sites thank u. kimmq, GM, GE, GMO is a process that you and I can't do, unless u have an elaborate lab tucked in ur garage - I don't. I love Gerbera Daisys, my budget only allowed for the purchase of 6 light pink. One of those plants was a lighter pink, yes yes, I will protect it with my life (not totally nuts just budget limitations). That said I needed/wanted more lite pink plants so I stuck my finger in the lightest pink ones every time I passed by, when it produced seed I planted them. It took 2 tries before I had results, 14 plants, will they be like the mother plant? Since I did not "bag" those blooms some other little "helper" could have had a go at the same lite blooms. When these new plants bloom I will know if I succeeded in producing more lite pink Gerbera Daisys huh. If a pollinator, wind, or me caused the resulting lite pink blooms I consider it all a Natural way, if me or nature produces something that, like me taking the bloom from a white Gerbera and rubbing it on the pink one, it is nothing more than what a bee could have done. Still a natural process. GM, GE, GMO, requires manipulation of the DNA with elaborate equipment in a lab. :)...See MoreGoldfish magically appeared, now they are breeding like rabits!
Comments (20)Allowing frogs around the pond is also a good way to keep the fish population down, and the other way around is also true. One product that has worked better than anything else I have ever used in the past is called Aquascape. It's in a powder form. Water stays balanced. 3 regular gold fish have lived in it for the past 6 Winters. From June to October, I add my Lion Goldfish with them too. I cut the tree that's made so much shade last Sunday. A smaller one is growing and will soon take over. Meantime, I installed netting which protects and allows me to see the beauty of the fish and the pond. The two spruce trees allow plenty of shade on the south side. The filter in the center runs year around and keeps the water moving, so my fish survive the rigorous Vermont weather. I see them through the ice in the Winter. I do not feed them from about November to March. When they start eating, I feed them frozen shrimp and goldfish pellets that soak overnight in my fridge. The longest one is 9'' long now and the size of a coke bottle. When I first got them, they were all about 2" long and the size of a nail clipper. One of them had a baby (black at first) three years ago, but it turned orange by the end of the Summer. It's a good idea to keep a Heron decoy to scare the real ones away, as you see in my first photo at the top. My cats watch the fish from the 3 season porch. What a treat for them!...See Moretypes of earthworms and pictures names - equatorial soils
Comments (2)Eden, I'm in Hawaii and we may have the same kind. They're called perionyx excavatus and the common names include Indian Blues and Malaysian Blues. If they are the kind that hang out under the leaf litter, but don't go very far down in the soil, then you're got the right kind. (Epigeic worms. The endogic kind - the ones that dig down deep - don't do the composting as well.) Here's a site from Vietnam describing them - http://www.earthwormvietnam.com/English_files/about_perionyx_excavatus.htm They say "Perionyx excavatus is a beautiful worm with an iridescent blue or violet sheen to its skin clearly visible under bright light. It is a very small worm, poorly suited as fishing bait, but has an impressive growth and reproductive rate far in excess of the other species grown in bin culture." It's not used more commonly in the mainland US because it doesn't tolerate cold well and would die in the winter. One comercial worm farmer in southern California, where it doesn't get as cold, says that PE is superior in speed of composting and breeding. If you want, I can try and find the reference. Google perionyx excavatus and click on 'images' for lots of photos. A good intro is at www.hawaiirainbowworms.com/C-perionyx.html Let us know how things turn out! I started with 1 oz (28g) about 9 months ago and now have well over a pound (2kg). Even just a handful would multiply to a respectable number in about 3-4 months. I bought mine, but I've been thinking of going in to the forest and seeing what I can find after a rain. I'll probably get to it in the next few weeks. I'll let you know what I find. Are any of our Southern US or tropical country friends using PE?...See MoreAnyone work with african Earthworms?
Comments (2)Hi Sal, I used to raise and sell African Nightcrawlers commercially. I've since discontinued the Africans for Euro's. Both are good composters and make great castings. For fishing, I prefer Euro's because of their thicker skin and ability to survive better in cool water. You can get Euros to gain weight quickly by top feeding with oatmeal...they get about as fat as my little finger, and long too. Heat affecting worms is overrated. The damp bedding cools them down well. I maintain Euros and Red Wigglers en masse in my garage, with ambient temps often well over 100 degrees in the summer. I never have a problem. If I were to put the same pans of worms outside in 80 degree weather in direct sunlight, the the bedding starts to cook...THAT is when you have a problem....Africans, Euro's, Jumpers, they will all cook in a heated up bin due to the body mass of a worm. Here is a link that might be useful: The Worm Dude...See Morejcjcjcx
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Min3 South S.F. Bay CA
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Deidre Meeusen
2 years agolast modified: 2 years agoI wish this post came with a solid answer, as I am 100% dealing with the same problem. I live in eastern WV. I have a small 50 gallon pond with 2 filters- one for the spillway/waterfall, the second for a small fountain thing and a frog thing that spits water, and a layer of smallish rocks at the bottom. We shutdown the filters for winter, and at the beginning of April we went out to clean the muck and debris that had accumulated. There were giant (and by giant, I am not exaggerating when I say one of them was at least 10" long) earthworm looking things EVERYWHERE in the water! They were NOT dead, some of them seemed to be grouped around what *looked like* bloated ticks (that's what I originally thought, but after some research, they might have been eggs?). We got out the ones we could see, put a water clarifying agent in the water and started the pumps up. I tried to research what the heck we were seeing, and I couldn't get a solid answer because of these people who just want to argue about what you actually saw in your own pond. It wasn't limited to this page. April 18th (about a week or two later), the spillway pump was down to a trickle, and the water fountain had tiny little worms (these looked like tiny earthworms, not red in color) coming out of the holes. We took the filters out, cleaned the muck off from them and found tiny worms were INSIDE the filter mesh. Soooooo.... we went out and bought some goldfish to put in there. Fish like worms, right?? Obviously a tiny goldfish isn't going to eat a 10" worm, but we were hoping they would go after the babies... eggs... larvae?
Two days ago, April 27, the spillway was slowing down to a trickle again, the fountain was fine, though. Again cleaned muck, found worms. My husband pushed some of the rocks at the bottom around, and more of these giant worms started popping out. We decided to just start shoveling the rocks out. There really wasn't any plan beyond that, just get as many rocks out as we can, and go from there. So. Many. Worms. This time I got pictures of some of them! As my husband is shoveling these rocks out (being extra careful not to puncture the lining, or a goldfish), I'm spraying them off with a hose. Besides the giant earthworm looking guys woven through the rocks (and very much alive), there's teeny-tiny red worms attached to the rocks, as well. What the heck is going on in my pond?! The internet has not been helpful. I've learned more about worms than I ever wanted to know, but I have zero answers to my own problems. I either have glycera bloodworms (because of the tiny red worms), nightcrawlers (because of the full grown looking worms), and/or non-biting midge fly larvae (because those are also tiny red worms called bloodworms). Terrifying fun fact, glycera bloodworms have metal teeth, and they bite 😐. I wish I could go back to last year when the only "problem" we had in the pond were tadpoles. Help? Anyone? Suggestions (besides taking a flame thrower to my whole backyard, my husband said that isn't an option)?
This is too much nature for me. Nature is gross. At least they aren't African Jumping Worms, because that's a thing. *gag*
Linds Cee
2 years agolast modified: 2 years agoWe are in my (Long Island) and have those giant aquatic earthworm like worms too. I think we also have flatworms (in the picture). Ick.
Deidre Meeusen
2 years agoLinds Cee
2 years agoDeidre Meeusen
2 years agoAllie Brooks
2 years agoI thought worms drowned in water too .. i went creek crawling and found piles of what looked like Night Crawlers scattered here and there on the bottom of the creek.
Ive been trying to google what the heck theyre doing and found this post lol
(I used to be too girly to touch them but in an effort to not pass down the squeamish to my daughter i have over come it enough to take photos like that 🤣)
Deidre Meeusen
2 years agoOhhh my lort- nope I'm too much of a girly girl, I can't do slimy and wriggling. I saw some episode of Unexplained Files (that might not have been the show) on Travel Channel. They were telling a crazy story about how Texas had some kind of mystery worm event. They weren't underwater, but the worm scenes they showed gave me 'Nam flashbacks.
Since the last time I commented on here, we upgraded the pond to a 250 gal because the fish we got were outgrowing the 50 gal (hopefully gettin' to that worm eatin' size). We also put down geotextile underlayment way out from the pond edges, secured it with landscape edging, and covered it in pea pebbles; we didn't have any kind of weed or erosion control before. The worms could just slide out from the dirt and plop themselves into the pond. I'm really hoping I've slowed down any future wormpocalypses. My nerves and my stomach can't take all that again!
(The 50 gal pond has been repurposed into an in-ground planter. Still waiting on the actual plant.)
groundbeef1