Feeding bloodworms to rams

[Lennie]

Hey fellow ram keepers!

WhileI was watching GBR care videos back in the days, I've noticed that KeepingFishSimple mentions whenever he feeds bloodworms to his GBrams, he has been facing issues and even facing deaths. So he recommends not to feed bloodworms to rams. I am not sure if this situation is specific to rams, or more specifically for GBR. Or is it even a thing?

In most GBR fish care articles, bloodworms are suggested as a food option.

What is your experience in this regard? As I keep them in a community tank, my fish enjoy their weekly bloodworms very much. Should I avoid feeding that tank bloodworms? Or is it unlikely to face any issues?

I am not eager to run my own worm culture, and good quality bloodworms is the only good frozen food I can have my hands on lately. I also use freeze tried tubifex and sera o nips in terms of treat. Sadly can't get frozen brine shrimp/bbs lately in stock.

Thanks for sharing your experiences.

Here is the tagging part for fellow ram keepers I can remember of: @Guppysnail @Chick-In-Of-TheSea @dasaltemelosguy @knee @Fish Folk @xXInkedPhoenixX @DiscusLover @NOLANANO . Please feel free to tag any other ram/specifically GBR keepers to hear about more experience regarding bloodworm feeding. I believe it may be helpful in general.

I'm curious to hear about your experience!

Here is the related part of the video:

 

 

Edited April 2, 2023 by Lennie

[Fish Folk]

Keep the bloodworm servings minimal. For some reason, BWs gum up the Ram’s GI.
 

They’ll do splendidly with a weekly addition of finely chopped krill. Carotenoids bring out their colors.

[Lennie]

On 4/2/2023 at 8:50 PM, Fish Folk said:

Keep the bloodworm servings minimal. For some reason, BWs gum up the Ram’s GI.
 

They’ll do splendidly with a weekly addition of finely chopped krill. Carotenoids bring out their colors.

Could be cool, but sadly everything else I found were expired lol. No clue why they think it is okay to sell expired frozen food. This one says 2024.

I mean maybe it does not have a big risk due to being frozen, but on the other hand, frozen food are not meant to be melted anyway so if there is an expiry date on the package, it should mean expiry date as a frozen food 😄 Right?

So I didn't want to buy something expired intentionally and just got bloodworms.

 

[Fish Folk]

Rams can do fine with a variety of flake foods, Bug Bites, etc. personally, I have seen mine wear down when I feed too much frozen BW.

[Guppysnail]

I have learned to feed bloodworms very sparingly to catfish only. After encountering issues even in catfish I choose to not feed blood worms. My understanding is they are mostly fat and little nutritional anyway. Now I culture live grindal worms gutloaded with high quality fish food and white worms gutloaded with high nutrient nutritional yeast. Nothing beats yummy live worms 🪱 

A friend ( @Lennie 🤗) sent me this 

Guppysnail:

Edited April 2, 2023 by Guppysnail

[Lennie]

On 4/2/2023 at 10:16 PM, Guppysnail said:

I have learned to feed bloodworms very sparingly to catfish only. After encountering issues even in catfish I choose to not feed blood worms. My understanding is they are mostly fat and little nutritional anyway. Now I culture live grindal worms gutloaded with high quality fish food and white worms gutloaded with high nutrient nutritional yeast. Nothing beats yummy live worms 🪱 

A friend ( @Lennie 🤗) sent me this 

Guppysnail:

😄

I'm telling you, I should be living near you and let you feed my fish once a week. They would enjoy the feast you may offer! 😄 

Now I feel hesitant to feed bloodworms aaa. 

I guess I better feed small portions until I use the whole pack and not get bloodworms again >_>

Edited April 2, 2023 by Lennie

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

I regularly feed frozen bloodworms to my Bolivian ram and have not experienced any ill effects. I believe @xXInkedPhoenixX does as well, combining frozen bloodworms and brine shrimp at the feeding time.

[Lennie]

On 4/2/2023 at 11:50 PM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

I regularly feed frozen bloodworms to my Bolivian ram and have not experienced any ill effects. I believe @xXInkedPhoenixX does as well, combining frozen bloodworms and brine shrimp at the feeding time.

Snoopy likes the spaghetti you say 😄 

 

[xXInkedPhoenixX]

On 4/2/2023 at 1:50 PM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

Bolivian ram and have not experienced any ill effects. I believe @xXInkedPhoenixX does as well, combining frozen bloodworms and brine shrimp at the feeding time.

All yes, about 1x a week.  And a variety of flake food the rest of the time. (I've experienced no ill effects related to my feeding regime)

Edited April 2, 2023 by xXInkedPhoenixX

[DiscusLover]

I feed bloodworms every other day with other varieties of foods, I never had issues with rams bloating up but however, I do have instances where my angelfish have bloated from bloodworms.

[Lennie]

On 4/3/2023 at 5:32 AM, DiscusLover said:

I feed bloodworms every other day with other varieties of foods, I never had issues with rams bloating up but however, I do have instances where my angelfish have bloated from bloodworms.

Dang, that tank has angels too🤣

[DiscusLover]

On 4/2/2023 at 10:51 PM, Lennie said:

Dang, that tank has angels too🤣

yes yes yes.. "Angelfish and rams should not go together," but I never had any instances with them both, and plus I have midnights so twice more aggression but only saw aggression during spawning, so other than that I believe that they could 😄

[Lennie]

On 4/3/2023 at 8:22 PM, DiscusLover said:

yes yes yes.. "Angelfish and rams should not go together," but I never had any instances with them both, and plus I have midnights so twice more aggression but only saw aggression during spawning, so other than that I believe that they could 😄

I have heard about problem once, and a friend's angels killed her rams for some reason. But other than that, I have never heard of problems either really. My angels are juveniles rn, and rams only seem to care about each other. Good side is, rams enjoy lower side and angels like higher side of the tank. I believe cichlids care about the other cichlids in their size more, or if they share the same level and territory in the tank.

I'm happy to hear you had no issues at all! I wanted to try them with backup plans, which I hope I will never need to use 🙂

Edited April 3, 2023 by Lennie

[DiscusLover]

On 4/3/2023 at 10:26 AM, Lennie said:

I have heard about problem once, and a friend's angels killed her rams for some reason. But other than that, I have never heard of problems either really. My angels are juveniles rn, and rams only seem to care about each other. Good side is, rams enjoy lower side and angels like higher side of the tank. I believe cichlids care about the other cichlids in their size more, or if they share the same level and territory in the tank.

I'm happy to hear you had no issues at all! I wanted to try them with backup plans, which I hope I will never need to use 🙂

Angels are mostly middle to the top, they do occasionally go down but that's usually during feeding. Keeping it densely planted with lots of covers helps a lot. At the end of the day, it's also based on the fish's personality. 

[NOLANANO]

I haven't noticed this correlation but it does make sense as keeping Rams to their full life span has been difficult.  I am glad you brought this to my attention and I will definitely monitor this going forward. Also I trust KFS as a good source of knowledge so if he is making this correlation and posting it on the internet, I would trust that he has a high confidence level in his assessment.