has any one imported frozen blood worms?

[Scottie841]

Go for it Zane. You need to learn how to make money for yourself so I would say get it in and sell it cheaper then the LFS. If you sell enough of them you can turn it in a good little business. When your business is doing well enough to (as Barry said) "get rid of all those fish shops" you will be able to buy one of them and sell your cheap imports so that you too can feed your family.

[Scottie841]

Barrie, we do have a warehouse in motueka, It has been here for about 5 years.

Initially the locals were all like you and poo pooed the thought of it.

Soon they all realised that the red shed bought more people into the community from outlying areas, small business's thrived and the main street went from having every second shop empty to being a busy and diverse town centre that provides employment for far more people than it ever did.

Well said KB

Competition keeps things a little more honest. There are a lot of small towns like this that have been made in to a better place because of lager company and people that import their own goods

[bronze-dragon]

Zane dude I'd buy them from you, we all gotta start somewhere.

If as you say you can get them for $1.50 per 100 grams I would be willing to buy $20 worth.

[phoenix44]

no!

ill sell them to you!

$3 per 100gm and ill let you play with rusty for free!

[bronze-dragon]

No!

I was gonna buy them cheap from Zayne and sell them to YOU at $3!

and I get to play with Rusty for free anyways :lol:

[phoenix44]

I feed fresh foods now. buy small quantities and more often.

[livingart]

playing the baiting game?

[Scottie841]

[*]

no!

ill sell them to you!

$3 per 100gm and ill let you play with rusty for free!

:lol: This is just like retail. Zane gets them in at $1.50, we pay $2.00 and then on sell for $3 :lol:

It is just like the real world:

Zane = importer/wholesaler

Me and Bronze = retailer

P44 = Retail customer

[phoenix44]

playing the baiting game?

maybe :oops:

but stuff like raw prawn and that new food i got go down a treat.

[Ira]

maybe :oops:

but stuff like raw prawn and that new food i got go down a treat.

Yeah, raw frozen prawns work out to about $1.70/100 grams, fish fillets are similar, I see no reason you couldn't grate them up and feed them to fish too. Variety is good. I know mine love them. Well, when I had bigger fish anyway.

[John Rimbauer]

Wow. Some opinions popped up here.

Anyway, back to the topic - I'd recommend that before you import, you should have a chinwag with Customs (email link via their website) and MAF. They'll be able to tell you what's what with regard to quarantine, treatments, duties and so forth.

I know about 4 people who import for their business, and they all reckon that the whole quarantine and tax angle is pretty serious. The last few imports I've bought in have spent a couple of days clearing customs. That doesn't matter for some things, but you'd want to check that your bloodworms didn't get stuck somewhere defrosting, and that you don't get hit with duties and GST after they are here. Or worse, seized and destroyed.

[alanmin4304]

If you get a strawberry and freeze it in liquid nitrogen when it thaws out it is pretty much like a strawberry. If you freeze a strawberry in you domestic freezer at minus 10 degrees when it thaws out it will be strawberry mush. This is because the slower that it freezes, the bigger the ice crystals that are formed and they pierce the cell walls. Fish will keep in a domestic freezer for about 3 months at minus 10 degrees and in a commercial freezer below minus 18 for 6 months (9-12 months in some realy cold commercial facilities). If food is snap frozen (very rapidly) then stored at a very low temperature, the quality will be the best. If your frozen bloodworms thaw in transit and are then refrozen slowly and stored in a domestic freezer their quality will be as bad as it gets. It is not food for human consumption, but if it was it would be required to be snap frozen and maintained at a constant temperature at or below minus 18 degrees C prior to sale. A domestic freezer will not do this. You then need to get it to your customers while maintaining a temperature of less than minus 18 degrees.

For the above reasons please do not include me on your list of customers.

[Zayne]

the blood worms are packed in dried ice.

[Barrie]

the blood worms are packed in dried ice.

what Alan was refering to was the storage here

[Zayne]

oh in a freezer of course

[alanmin4304]

General Foods store your frozen peas at minus 30 something degrees and they are snap frozen. What you are proposing would give a food technologist a migraine if you were talking about food for human consumption. All living things have a built in self destruct mechanism or we would be wading over large piles of dead things that were once living. Freezing only slows this process. I would bet a dollar to a proverbial that what you will end up with is a product without much food value and a high posibility of it being toxic. If food is not prepared and stored properly bacteria multiply, enzymic reactions and oxidation are sped up and the product becomes vitually useless as food if not toxic from containing pathagenic bacteria and even the toxins which some of them produce as they multiply. These are fish food but also very good bacterial food.

A domestic freezer is not adequate for the storage of products like this except in the short term.

[BikBok]

General Foods store your frozen peas at minus 30 something degrees and they are snap frozen. What you are proposing would give a food technologist a migraine if you were talking about food for human consumption.

Freezing only slows this process. I would bet a dollar to a proverbial that what you will end up with is a product without much food value and a high posibility of it being toxic. If food is not prepared and stored properly bacteria multiply, enzymic reactions and oxidation are sped up and the product becomes vitually useless as food if not toxic from containing pathagenic bacteria and even the toxins which some of them produce as they multiply. These are fish food but also very good bacterial food.

A domestic freezer is not adequate for the storage of products like this except in the short term.

I wonder if you could tell me about frozen bloodworms that are bought here in NZ from a LFS. How long will they keep in an ordinary chest freezer? I've had a packet in the freezer a while now (over half a year) because I only feed bloodworms once a week . Time to biff the packet out and get a new one?

[livingart]

good question bikbok

i have used thawed and refrozen mysis and lost some seahorses but other horses were alright

same with bloodworms lost a tank of young fish, but fed others bloodworms from same packet and was ok

as alan has said they can become toxic, especially the bloodworms

i do buy in bulk though and use within 3 to 4 months

[Zayne]

it would be gone in 4 months

[alanmin4304]

It is hard to know unless you know how they were frozen and then stored. On the safe side 3-4 months would be best. Might be alright for longer---depends how lucky you are feeling. They are not for human consumption so those standards do not apply. The same principles do though.

[David R]

Competition keeps things a little more honest.

There is nothing "honest" [fair] about a fish shop with all the overheads of keeping livestock having to compete with garage-traders selling cheap parallel imported pumps, gear, and food. There is nothing wrong with competition and I'm all for a free market, the question is really about the ethics of the individual. Are you a penny-pincher who decides where to spend their money based solely on price, or do you value customer service and after-sale support? IMO people put far too much emphasis on price these days, I could have bought a cheapo pump from some parallel importer on trademe for close to half the price my Laguna cost from HFF, but instead I chose to support them as I know if ever I have a problem with it they are open 7 days a week with spare parts on hand, and will do their best to resolve the situation as quickly as possible.

Last time I bought frozen bloodworm from lfs it was $8 that was about 3 years ago and I know his prices have gone up since. Taupo only has 1 outlet, so IMO it cuts both ways.

Have you tried talking to HFF? It might be worth them shipping a polybox full to Taupo if you and a few other people got together and placed an order and supported one of the best LFS's in the country.......

[BikBok]

We mostly sell AHT brand bloodworms. These are large fat and very red bloodworms. Most of our customers ask for the this brand now. We find that most fish prefer the AHT compared to Aqua One brand at feeding time.

We have heard some retailers selling their bloodworms for $8 and $10 per packet not sure which brand though.

We sell ours for $4 per 10 packets and $4.50 at 5 packets.

Also the thawing and refreezing process is bad for the bloodworms as it can rupture the very thin "skin" or casing that contains the goodness. We recommend rinsing the worms before putting them in your tank to remove any loose blood that your fish cant eat. This excess blood/juice ends up polluting your aquarium. So if you rinse bloodworms that have been thawed and refrozen too many times there wont be not much for your fish left to eat...

We do sell the Aqua One brand bloodworms if our supply of AHT runs out. These don't sell as fast. People out right refuse to buy these and prefer to wait until the AHT comes back in.

Though saying that we do have some breeders who like to give the smaller Aqua One bloodworms to their smaller or young fish.

Oh yes we ship the frozens too :bounce:

thanks for that information.

I have been using the aquaone brand but the last time I fed them , the fish weren't as interested as usual (maybe because I'd found some live ones in the gravel I'd been giving them)

Anyway, I might try the AHT brand next time.. are they small enough for guppies?

[Barrie]

"Anyway, I might try the AHT brand next time.. are they small enough for guppies?"

yes, my smaller killis scoff them down

I bought about 20 pkts of Aquaones last weekend but also prefer the AHT although I cant taste the difference :oops:

[Ira]

"Anyway, I might try the AHT brand next time.. are they small enough for guppies?"

yes, my smaller killis scoff them down

I bought about 20 pkts of Aquaones last weekend but also prefer the AHT although I cant taste the difference :oops:

Heh, I wouldn't even want to think about tasting them...I get an allergic reaction just from touching the frozen cubes.

[Caryl]

I did an article in the latest AW on that very subject Ira! Apparently it is a common allergy.