There are some live worms wiggling around in my concrete garden pond. I have never seen worms in the pond before. It is dark outside, and the pond light isn’t showing the worms true color (I have an amber lens in the underwater light). I’m thinking regular earhtworms, but an they live underwater? and why would a bunch of them (15-20) all of a sudden migrate to my pond? It hasn’t rained today, we had a thunderstorm yesterday.
IIRC, earthworms ‘breathe’ (i.e., do their gas exchange) through their skins, which means that they need to be slightly moist at all times, but I thought they needed to be in air.
I can personally say that they can at least live a long time underwater. I fed some to my catfish once, and the next day one was still there and alive (actually only about 12 hours later).
I’ve also heard that someone fed them to their fish, only to discover a batch of tiny baby earthworms in their filter months later, but like I said, that’s second hand and I suspect that they may have actually been bloodworms.
Now that I think of it, are you sure the worms you’re seeing aren’t bloodworms? IIRC they are actually quite common.
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I’d say they could be mistaken for earthworms in bad lighting conditions.
Thanks for the info. My worms (my worms!!!..ewww) aren’t red, plus they are smooth, no little legs like the picture. They are normal earthworm sized - 3"-4" long.
I had to quit looking at them, they were creeping me out. I don’t know why, I can normally look at worms. I run across enough of them in the dirt, but something about them slowly wiggling around underwater just made me want to run and hide.
Boscibo: Earthworms dive into my swimming pool all the time. The weather has been warm these last few weeks, so not many going swimming, but at the first of May it was common to see a handful at the bottom each morning.
Don’t ask me why though.