One of the most popular options when it comes to feeding your aquarium fish a meaty diet is the Hikari Bio-Pure Freeze Dried Blood Worms.
If you are looking into buying this aquatic food product, make sure to check out Aquarium Blueprints’ comprehensive review first.
Hikari Bio-Pure Freeze Dried Blood Worms Ingredients
The product contains blood worms that have been bio-encapsulated to include L-ascorbyl-2-polyphoshate (stabilized vitamin C), pyridoxine hydrochloride, riboflavin (vitamin B2), thiamine mononitrate, vitamin B12 supplement and vitamin E supplement.
You can see how much of the above is mixed into the blood worms in the analysis below:
- Crude Protein: min. 65.0%
- Crude Fat: min. 5.0%
- Crude Fiber: max. 3.5%
- Moisture: max. 6.5%
- Phosphorus: min. 0.1%
- Ascorbic Acid: min. 60 mg/kg
- Riboflavin: min. 20 mg/kg
- Vitamin B12: min. 2000 µg/kg
Pricing
You can check out the current price of the Bio-Pure Freeze Dried Blood Worms on Amazon with this link. (#CommissionsEarned)
Expiration Date
The “Best Before” date for the food can be found on the packaging. The date is pressed on the bottom of our container; with that said, the placement could be different in the new versions of the product. Hikari recommends opening the container before the expiration date so that the quality of the worms can still be held up to their guaranteed standards.
Storage and Usage
After opening the package, Hikari also suggest that you feed everything within 90 days. You should also keep the bloodworms away from direct sunlight, hot temperatures and high humidity environments. Failure to do so will mean that the food will degrade even faster that the aforementioned 90-day period.
We personally fed the blood worms beyond the “Best Before” date and haven’t notice any problems when it comes to our fish’s interest in eating the food. Not to mention that are fish are very healthy. However, we do keep the container away from the sunlight as well as avoid storing it in a place with high temperature and/or humidity.
What fish/animals will eat Hikari’s Bio-Pure Freeze Dried Blood Worms?
According to Hikari, American cichlids, discus, eels, goldfish, livebearers and some aquatic reptiles will enjoy eating their brand of bloodworms. From our experience, Guppies, Harlequin Rasbora, Platys and White Cloud Minnows can’t get enough of the food. We even seen our Bladder Snails, Ramshorn Snails and Red Cherry Shrimps pick at the worms.
Pros
The biggest benefit of feeding Hikari’s Freeze Dried Blood Worms is that you don’t have to worry about any potentially dangerous parasites and/or bacteria from getting into your fish. The external attackers, which can come from live blood worms, are killed off during the freeze dried process. Hikari also added extra vitamins via bio-encapsulation to add some nutrition to the food so that your fish and grown healthy and maintain their health.
Cons
One potential issue we have with this fish food is that, while being freeze dried kills off the harmful parasites, it also makes the worms less nutritious when compared to when they are alive. With that said, we take the trade-off of a fish food being disease-free as opposed to being more nutritious every single time.
Another potential problem with this food is that it may cause bloating. It is going to take a little bit of time for the dried bloodworms to become complete soaked, softened and expand when you put the food into the tank. Unfortunately, your fish may immediately eat them before that process is completed. As a result, the eaten worms will expand in their stomach, potentially causing issues such as constipation and swim bladder.
Last but not least, some people may be allergic to bloodworms. As a precaution, you should be careful and not touch the bloodworms (we used a plastic spoon to scoop from the container and drop into the aquarium). If you do make contact, you should thoroughly wash your hands immediately. If you make contact with the food through your eyes, mouth or nose and filling unwell because of it, then you might want to seek medical attention.
Feeding Directions
Hikari suggest feeding their Freeze Dried Blood Worms at up to three times a day. In terms of amounts, you should feed until your fish completely consume ever worm in the tank in a few minutes.
Before putting the bloodworms in your fish tank, we suggest that you presoak them so that you don’t have to worry about any of the bloating and constipation issues we previously mentioned. We recommend using a small bow as you can first add in the water from your tank and then the freeze dried bloodworms. Wait until the worms are soaked, which takes only a few minutes, and then pour all of the content from the bowl into your tank.
For smaller fish, you may have to break the worms into smaller pieces so that your pets will have a easier time eating.
If, after 5 minutes are so, you still see bloodworms in your tank and your fish are no longer interested in eating them, you can use your fish net to remove the excess food from the aquarium. In our personal experiences, however, we just leave them in the tank. This is because the fish (as shrimp and snails) will end up eventually end up eating them over time. Even if there is still some left over after that, the worms are still a great food source for your live plants and beneficial bacteria.
Of course, we highly recommend removing the worms if there are reducing the water flow by clogging your filter intake. If you are worried about ammonia and nitrite spikes, then it is better to be safe than sorry and remove the uneaten food. If are even more paranoid, you may also want to consider doing a water change.
Recap
We find the Hikari Bio-Pure Freeze Dried Blood Worms to be great as it is high in protein and provide a lot of vitamins for our fish. Unlike live bloodworms, you also don’t have to worry about any external parasites from getting into your fish tank.
We recommend pre-soaking the food before putting it into your aquarium in order to prevent bloating and swim bladder problems. After feeding time, you might want to consider removing any excess food from the tank if you believe it will lead to reduced water flow and/or spikes to ammonia and nitrites.
You should also make sure not to touch the worms as they can cause an allergic reaction.
If you are interested, you can purchase the Hikari Bio-Pure Freeze Dried Blood Worms with this link (#CommissionsEarned) on Amazon.