Keeping Blackworms Alive

      My typical method for keeping blackworms is to buy 1/2 pound for around seven dollars, rinse them, drain out most of the water, then keep them in the bag in my downstairs fishroom fridge.  Use some over the next few days, do a couple of rinses, then forget.  When the fridge begins to smell, it is time to once again own up to the fact that I blew another seven dollars.
      Our Keystone Killie Group meeting last week was at Jack LaFayette's house in Reading, PA.  Jack keeps his blackworms in a fifty gallon aquarium with just a few inches of water.  He does make occasional water changes, and does keep his worms alive.  Having seen his set up, I decided to try my luck with my newest 1/2 pound of blackworms by keeping them in my fishroom.
      Not having a 50 gallon tank in waiting, I decided to try a two gallon set up instead!  I rinsed the worms, then put them in the little plastic aquarium with a small sponge filter made by Aquarium Technology.  I am sure that that oxygen delivered from the sponge filter is critical to the keeping of the worms.
      I was expecting a bloody mess after day one, but the water was not too bad.  I discarded the water, rinsed the worms, then added aged rain water.  So far, so good.

      This is a picture of the blackworm tank taken this morning before a water change.  I have changed the water maybe three times this week, using the spent water to feed my daphnia.  Note how clean the water is after the first week.

      Here is the tank before changing the water.  Note the filter at the right part of the picture.

Worms like to congregate on the filter

Filter with worms in small plastic container

Worms that fell from filter, ready to feed to fish

      This is a picture of some of my daphnia containers after I had used the spent blackworm water to fill them back up.  I had run half of the water from each container through a brine shrimp net to capture the daphnia.  The spent daphnia water was used to refill the blackworm tank.

Back in operation.  No fuss, no smell.

      I have a couple more of the little sponge filters to run other experiments.  Currently I am not feeding the blackworms, so their nutritional value as a fishfood should decrease over time.  I would like to set up more tanks at a lesser density of worms and feed them to see if I can actually cultivate blackworms.
      But so far, so good.  Have not blown this last batch of worms.  Jack, thanks for the inspiration and motivation to try this approach.