Growing Bloodworms

[Dragontongue]

Well, as everyone knows, I have one betta. I've had him about a week and he refuses to eat anything not alive. (so far I've only been able to get him to eat live mosquito larvae- no betta bits and no frozen bloodworms). The guy at the fishstore yesterday recommended live bloodworms... that you rinse every day and keep alive in the fridge for a month... sounds hard. Has anyone done this? Only having one fish also poses something of an issue as Neptune definately isn't going to need that much. Just wanted ideas and opinions!

[supersmirky]

Look – under the water -- for blood worm eggs on sticks and grasses near the shoreline. They look like little blobs of snot with 50 to 700 tiny dots in them – very much like pond snail eggs, but with lots more tiny dots. Bring these blobs home and culture them. They hatch in 24 to 48 hours.
Blood worm larvae avoid the light. You could probably get faster growth by putting black plastic sheets over them. They construct tiny tubes in which they live during the day. This makes them difficult to harvest. The pros harvest them at night, when they emerge from their tubes. Shutting off their aeration also causes them to come out.
Covered plastic shoe boxes will keep out mosquitoes. Uncovered containers are easier to aerate. You may want to use a 10-gallon aquarium so you can aerate it. If you've ever put water-filled containers out to grow mosquito larvae, you've also grown blood worms.

[sap]

put a 10-20g tank outdoors and put aged aquarium water in it, put it in a spot where it will get direct sunlight in the morning and shade in the afternoon order a live culture of daphnia or buy some freeze dried hikari and put them in there( the freeze dried will still have viable eggs in them) and pretty soon you will have all kinds off goodies growing in there for your betta.

[Dragontongue]

Wow, thanks a ton! I'll definately check that out!