The Puffer Forum

yikes. i left out my frozen bloodworms and brine shrimp cubes overnight and now they are smelly. I know brine shrimp smells fishy but blood worms? Im imagining all the bacteria reactivated and festering in those cubes.. I just dont know if theyre just smelly items (because i only handle them when theyre frozen) or if theyre rotten. I refroze them and theyre no longer smelly.. do u guys think i will give my puffs food poisoning if i feed them the cubes?

I would throw them out, not worth the risk.
Mine doesn't eat a full cube daily so I keep them refrigerated and have used for up to 2 days after unthawing.

Here's what happened to a friend who was watching my tanks while i was on vacation. He's a fireman:

"Jeni has her 90 year old neighbor come feed the dog and walk him when she is gone and I often see her in the house when I am there. One day I brought my daughter over to feed the fish and dose the tanks. Since my last visit the refrigerator had blown the GFI and the millions of lbs of frozen fish food thawed and rotted. It smelled exactly like a dead/rotting body throughout house as soon as we walked in. I didn't realize it was the fish food and thought it was the neighbor. I have smelled a lot of dead bodies in my time and the stench was the same. I told my daughter to wait at the door and searched the house looking for her remains. I finally checked the kitchen and saw a pool of brown filth on the floor by the fridge and figured it all out. It took me 2 hours to clean up the horrible mess. Where Jeni lives there are no alleys or dumpsters so I double bagged the contents of the fridge and freezer and put them in the sideyard. Two days later I came back to feed the fish and dose the tanks and could smell the rancid oder from 2 blocks away as I neared her house. The entire neighborhood smelled like a mortuary but the inside of her house smelled like Pine Sol. I think I got a tee shirt out of that ordeal. "

I have done the same thing in the past, leaving frozen fishfood out overnight before. I threw mine out. That would be the wise choice. It's cheaper to replace frozen bloodworms rather then dead puffers and any other fish that would eat that if you decide to feed that rotten food to them. Im sure you will just throw it out

LOL!! my wife did the same with my blood worms. Man did it stink. She left them in the truck over night.

I discarded the ones with the broken seals and re-used the rest.

Along the same lines, never re-freeze frozen food!

Bloodworms should never be refrozen.