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Bloodworms are larvae of midges (mosquito-like flies without the "pronger") The adults lay eggs in the water that look like little sacks of jelly. You sometimes see them hanging from the water surface or stuck to the edges of the bucket. You can wipe the "jelly" off and put it in your tank and when the larvae hatch they are great fry food.... but if you dont have enough fish to eat them they may live in the tank and emerge to fly around your house.

Blood worms. Send me a Private Message with your name and address.

Midges are cosmopolitan. Bloodworms are commonly of the genus Chironomus.. and fun-fact the red colour is haemoglobin which binds oxygen (as it does in our blood) allowing midge larvae to live in low oxygen environments like the sludge in the bottom of a fish-food bucket. https://www.naturespot.org.uk/species/chironomus-plumosus

Thats most interesting, I didn't think we had midges here in SE England, but maybe just get a small number. We certainly get mosquito here though as there are 2 lakes in the grounds, I have friends coming sunday and they will be sent to get some daphnia and mosquito larvae, they usually take a tub full home for their fish as well! I will pass on the tip about the jelly if they see any in their bucket! Simon

I think the fins will healquite quickly if they do get damaged, it just looks a bit worrying to the owners eye! Simon

See, that’s the kind of conciseness in a post that I completely lack ? Yeah I’ve also heard it can be. Luckily no damaged fins, besides a teeny tiny tear in one of Tessa’s fins.

I expect those worms are bloodworms, a friend tried the bucket a couple of years ago for mosquito larvae and ended up with bloodworms in the bucket! No idea how they got there? I had heard australia was suffering some extreme cold this year, but there is extreme weather everywhere this year? I thought mating bettas was usually quite aggressive, I did see damaged fins and a lot of chasing when I got baby betta, that should probably have been a clue to me that they weren't all females in my tank? Simon

Absolutely!

Ooh okay! I had a hunch but wasn’t certain, and was apprehensive to feed something to my fish if I don’t know what it is. I am okay to feed them to my fish, right? I tend to not use the filter very much unfortunately as the outflow runs through a waterfall feature and I can’t use it at night due to noise, so I often forget to turn it on during the day. I haven’t seen any sign of daphnia, mosquito larvae or anything else besides the bloodworms. I’m using oats for my microworm culture right now, don’t have any yeast on hand but I need to grab some to add to the culture. I’ve seen it done without yeast but I think it works better with some. From what I’ve heard, the ventral fin loss in bettas from microworms isn’t actually a fin rot at all, but a developmental issue that causes the bettas to have underdeveloped or missing ventral fins, especially if fed solely microworms from a very young age. So they won’t grow back. I’m tempted to try that as a bit of a test, but I found the perfect tub in my garage the other day, it’s a large rectangular storage tub that’s as tall as a bucket but considerably wider, so I can easily harvest bloodworms or mosquito larvae. It might surprise you, but in Melbourne we haven’t had temperatures higher than 15° for the last 3 months (with regular 5-10° days), so I hadn’t even thought about evaporation in summer. With that in consideration, my perfect tub is even more perfect than I thought! I actually did try to breed them twice last weekend (well, once 8 days ago, and once from Saturday to Monday), but I forgot to make a post about it. Essentially, I added the male to her tank on the 20th using a divider. They were both super excited; in fact, they got so excited that while the male was making his bubble nest, the female was producing eggs at a prolific rate. So much so that she got ‘over-full’, and started dropping unfertilised eggs all over her side of the tank!!! Naturally, I freaked out a little bit, and created a spawning tank in my laundry on the spot. I put them together maybe 5-6 hours after she had started dropping eggs, and I think it was just too late because she was exhausted and after 20 minutes of watching them I could tell she wasn’t in the mood. I removed her, kept the male in there, and called it a night. That was on the 22nd, and the full moon was on the 24th, so I figured I’d give them 2 days to recover and try for another spawn. This time I let them get used to each other in the spawning tank with a divider for a few hours, and once the male had made a bubble nest, I let the female out. The divider idea came after trying a plastic bottle, which my female HATED. She reacted very positively to the divider, so that’s my number one tip so far. Anyways, I gave it a go, and they seemed like they could spawn, but for some reason every time the female got close to the male’s bubble nest (which I think was more like a bubble mansion, seeing as he spent so much time adding to it and expanding) he would flare at her, she’d flare back (and I’d go ‘OOH YAY, PLEASE?’), and then he’d chase her away! He was just being a dingus! He spent hours working on this bubble nest that he wouldn’t even let her use!!! He didn’t want to hurt her, just to keep her away from his bubble nest. So after a few days she was clearly fed up with him, and I took her out on the 26th. I’m hoping to try again tomorrow. They’re both very very energetic right now whenever I walk up to their tanks, so I think they really want to go back together. The male has let his bubble nest break apart, which is a bit sad, but I’m sure he’ll start it back up again once I put the female back. I’m thinking of giving them about 36 hours with the divider this time. ALSO, I dunno if I’ve already said this, but they have names now! The male is named Bear and the female is named Tessa, or Tess for short. But for the sake of simplicity I will refer to them as ‘the male’ and ‘the female’ when I’m describing the breeding process just in case someone comes along some time in the future and wants to learn from my successes and failures (mostly failures). Anyway, apologies for the long and rambling message. I wish I could write posts with the clarity of jayc, but unfortunately I’m destined to use an unnecessary amount of words to get a message across. Cheers!

I tend to get mainly mosquito larvae and daphnia from a pond that has no water movement, do you get those in your pond or does the water movement prevent them? I did try the microworms in a yeast mixture once and that worked ok, I assume that is what you are already using? It was a bit fiddly for me and the adult fish weren't keen but it may be better with young fry? Is the fin rot something that clears up once they grow and are on to different foods? If you have both type of tub and bucketI would try both and see what works more successfully and you will probably also get more obviously. The shallow tray would need a regular top up I assume with the heat out there! Are both fish still doing well? I assume you haven't yet tried to breed them, or have you? Simon