BREEDING maggots for my fish

[Bandi]

In the wild, fish eat maggots (and flies) so I would think this would be a natural food source for them, right? I can usually find maggots on the farm somewhere...should I feed them to my fish?

So I have built three home made, small scale maggot traps.

By suspending the "breeding ground" in a bucket with 5/8 inch holes in the bottom. The maggots eventually work their way down to the bottom and fall through the holes and into a large rubbermaid tube with an overhang around the sides.

Today was day 4 since I "set" the trap and at noon today I collected my first harvest of 1/4 of an ice cream bucket of fresh maggots of all different sizes ready for the freezer. Yummy :cry:

As they freeze I am going to shake the bucket so they don't freeze in one solid lump.

Edited August 24, 2009 by guzookeeper

[syno321]

Why not? I've fed maggots that I've purchased from fishing stores to larger fish in the past with no ill effects.

[syno321]

Why not? I've fed maggots that I've purchased from fishing stores to larger fish in the past with no ill effects.

Edited August 19, 2009 by syno321

[JORG]

If I had access to free maggots I would have no second thoughts about feeding them to my fish

[Frank]

Maggots are cheap if you do not buy the fish bait ones in the stores. I get them for $7.00 per thousand out of Edmonton, but I do not feed them to my fish. GROSS...lol

Edited August 20, 2009 by Frank

[Crystal]

I often leave my old microworm cultures outside just so I can collect extra free food. :thumbs:

I don't even need to second guess feeding to fish, because I know what they have been eating.

[Bandi]

Well, today was the first day since creating this topic I was able to harvest some maggots. One of our ewes died a couple of days ago and now the weather has turned warm and....voila!...maggots...lots of them. So I have been scooping them up and putting them in silica sand to wriggle about in until they get nice and dry. Then I sift the wrigglers out and put them in a sealed contained in the freezer. I hope to get enough maggots in the next couple of weeks to stash enough away to last all winter. I am aiming to fill two icecream buckets full. I hope to cut down my food expenses by half. Still will feed some NLS pellets and color crumbles.

[Bandi]

Scratched the digging in dead carcas idea for the new suspended bucket trick. I get a bigger harvest without all the mess and smell!

Edited August 23, 2009 by guzookeeper

[Medic_how]

hi quzookeeper i have tried "making" maggots for trout fishing, but all i got were very small maggots and a smelly mess. I kept them for a couple more days hopping they would get fatter but they all hatched. I used a jar with some chicken hearts on the bottom. my question is could you post picks of your breeding grounds. i want to feed my fish some and catch some trout.

Thanks

Howard

Edited August 23, 2009 by Medic_how

[syno321]

the new suspended bucket trick

What is it?

[Bandi]

I'll take pictures and post them in the morning but the suspended bucket trick goes like this:

This method creates relatively fewer odors...there still will be some, but it wont knock your socks off.

Take a clean 5 gallon bucket (with lid) and put many 5/8 inch holes all over it (sides, top and bottom). The holes allow the flies to enter. Put some old freezer meat, dead cat, whatever you have, in the bucket for a "breeding ground" and seal the lid. Now suspend the bucket with a rope or chain over a clean (I used a rubbermaid) tub. I altered the tub just a bit by cutting the center of the tub's lid out in a circle just bigger than the diameter of the five gallon bucket.

I have my bucket full of "breeding ground" suspended over, but still a little inside the Rubbermaid tub...I suppose it would work also if you suspend the bucket well above the rubbermaid tub. Now wait 4 days (if weather is warm, longer if weather is cooler)

This is how it works.

The flies enter the bucket, find prime place to lay eggs. Why prime? because it is warm, indirect sunlight (if using a white bucket) or dark which maggots like if you used a colored or black bucket, and the bucket helps the breeding ground to remain moist another thing maggots like/need.

So what happens is the maggots hatch within 8-24 hours of being laid and spend the best of the next 4-6 days eating and growing. After they grow to their maximum size maggots instinctively "go ground" which means they seek out dryer areas. Maggots like to pupate in dry earth. So once they have fed on a carcass or manure, they go down to the ground and crawl along it to a dry place. We use this instinct to our advantage by putting wholes at the bottom of the bucket. The Maggots simply fall out and down into the rubbermaid container which now has a overhang lip created by the lid to prevent escape.

Some of the maggots will crawl up the side of the rubbermaid container but you wont loose many because they get stopped at the lid overhang.

So when you come to harvest them , bang the rubbermaid container really hard on all sides to get the maggots to fall down.

then just dump the maggots out into an ice-cream bucket, put a lid on it for the journey back to the house. Now you can just put the bucket in the freezer (shake the bucket every hour for three hours so they don't freeze in a solid block) or you can add cold water to the bucket and wash off the maggots first. But if you choose to wash them then I would strain them into ice cube trays so they can freeze in portion sized lumps.

Harvest your maggots daily, or they will either die (if they are immature) or pupate and fly away.

Please note: freezing maggots doesn't necessarily kill them. Once they warm up again, they will wriggle away!!!Yuck all over the kitchen counter.

Please note also: you will likely catch maggots of all sizes. Some just seem to fall through the wholes even though they are not mature. But you can always sift the small ones out. Personally, I like the variety as it feeds my community tank containing fish of all sizes.

Please note also also: the maggots still have an odor to them, not as bad as the ones I gathered directly from the dead sheep carcass however.

Please not also also also: the size of maggots you get depend of the species of fly you attracted.

This method can also be used as fly control even if you don't want to collect the maggots...simply put liquid poison (i.e. bleach) in the rubbermaid catch container and this will stop the already existing flies in your yard from creating more...it stops the cycle dead!

Edited August 24, 2009 by guzookeeper

[syno321]

Interesting, thanks!

[Bandi]

Completed my second harvest from my maggot trap and I now have just over half an ice-cream bucket full of maggots! I am happy with that amount considering I have only collected from the traps twice.

But each time I come in the house I feel itchy all over, like there are maggots in my shoes, my clothes, my hair! I know they are not, but still....

Oh, and by the way, I hope you know my family thinks I am nuts for breeding maggots.

Edited August 24, 2009 by guzookeeper

[Medic_how]

thanks for the pics.

friends and families never understand hobbies. I get questions like. you spent how much money on that? Are you still working on it? You call that having fun?(as they look at my paintball welts) but with collecting maggots, i expect more boggled eyes than usual.

Edited August 24, 2009 by Medic_how

[nathan]

That's not a half bad idea. I've also got tarantulas that would probably feed off of these as well.