Trying white worms

[GaryE]

Today, one of the dishes was coated on the inside with worms. That was how I fed 6 tanks. But beware - it's hard to get glass petrie dishes and plastic never appealed to my worm friends. You're better with a piece of glass in that case.

And the glass must be wet.

I too have never been a worm, though I'm sure my carbon has at some point. I wanted to make an earthy joke about acting the part and "casting", but a Dad joke that bad was too much even for me.

 

[anewbie]

Today, one of the dishes was coated on the inside with worms. That was how I fed 6 tanks. But beware - it's hard to get glass petrie dishes and plastic never appealed to my worm friends. You're better with a piece of glass in that case.

And the glass must be wet.

I too have never been a worm, though I'm sure my carbon has at some point. I wanted to make an earthy joke about acting the part and "casting", but a Dad joke that bad was too much even for me.

Amazon has them - 5 for $20. I just don't understand why the worms climb onto the upsidown wet glass but i will try it. My discus would like live worms rather than freeze dried black worms.

 

[fishorama]

I was the 1 who said just pick up a clod of whiteworm surface bedding & put in a (dechlorinated) 3inch? dish of water. Stir a bit & remove either the bedding or clump of worms. I used my fingers. Maybe it was easier in cool basement temps? I couldn't grow them here without a basement at ~mid 50F-low 60F. Nowhere in my CA house is that cool & consistent. I only tried it 1 time here, a big fail, too hot.

Several of my fish 2+ inch liked whiteworms but I started them for discus juveniles.

 

[Back in the fold]

Update here . My white worm culture is still going good . The population is slowly increasing but still not enough to feed yet . I feed cheap goldfish flake food and they eat up a lot in two days . Maybe it’s time to move the culture to a proper larger container . My thought there is that sometimes a population of anything will stabilize at a certain point because of environmental conditions . Some did crawl up onto the plastic lid and I dipped that into my lineatus aquarium . They went wild !

 

[anewbie]

I could never figure out how to harvest my white worms. I tried putting in a petri dish over their food and that didn't work well - maybe i should have put their food in the petri dish ? Maybe i waited too long or maybe i didn't wait long enough but i never found worms in my petri dishes

 

[Colin_T]

I could never figure out how to harvest my white worms. I tried putting in a petri dish over their food and that didn't work well - maybe i should have put their food in the petri dish ? Maybe i waited too long or maybe i didn't wait long enough but i never found worms in my petri dishes

The worms don't gather in the petri dish, they sit underneath it. The petri dish sits with its base in contact with the peat or whatever the worms live in. You lift the lid on the culture and see if there are worms under the glass dish. If there are, you lift the dish and either scrape some of the worms off with your finger and wiggle it in the aquarium, or you dip the petri dish in the aquarium. The worms wash off into the water and you put the dish/ glass back in the culture container.

 

[anewbie]

The worms don't gather in the petri dish, they sit underneath it. The petri dish sits with its base in contact with the peat or whatever the worms live in. You lift the lid on the culture and see if there are worms under the glass dish. If there are, you lift the dish and either scrape some of the worms off with your finger and wiggle it in the aquarium, or you dip the petri dish in the aquarium. The worms wash off into the water and you put the dish/ glass back in the culture container.

Wait - if they are not on the dish but in the peat under the dish; then if you scrape them out of the peat what advantage did the dish provide ? You still have to wash the peat off the worms...

 

[fishorama]

I'll repeat, I used shredded newspaper. Much easier to harvest worms that way even with the soggy falling apart paper. I think you guys are making it harder than it was for me.

 

[GaryE]

So here, the petrie dish sits on the medium (I use scrubber pads, not coir or peat) like a hat. So there is the height of the rim above the worms, and the inside gets a spray of water every time the food is replaced. The food is under it. The worms feed, and some of them climb the sides of the petrie dish and set themselves up on the glass above the food. I lift the petrie dish out when I see them there, dip it in a shallow container of water and feed them to the fish with a turkey baster.

When I used coir and peat, the water with the worms would be largely dirt free. I switched substrates because of fungus gnats getting into the cultures. I experimented a bit, and the local gnat species doesn't work as live food, except for my pitcher plants and my sundew, which like their company.

I feed sparingly, but a few worms every day for two or three days will get my killies breeding. More often than that and the fish'll become too fat and that will harm them greatly. It's a food for a purpose, and can be overused.

At this time of year, I feed whiteworms, mosquito larvae, daphnia and newly hatched brine shrimp to the fish, with bug bites on "in between" days. Live food cultures can be unpredictable, and aren't ready every day. I keep 8 white worm cultures going, but in general, three are good at any given time.

My tanks aren't in the house, which makes live food easier.

 

[anewbie]

I'll repeat, I used shredded newspaper. Much easier to harvest worms that way even with the soggy falling apart paper. I think you guys are making it harder than it was for me.

I would not use paper as it has chemicals on it.

 

[fishorama]

If you're talking about newspaper ink, most use soybean based 1s now. I never used colored newsprint for worms or bird cages.

 

[Lanpenn]

I have tried to cultivate Grindal worms (Enchytraeus buchholzi) in 2014-2015. I even have some photos from that time:

I have tried coconut fiber, as well as sponge scourers. I still have that small glass. Mites always came. I believe that in that case, they were only competitors in eating organic matter.

At a certain moment, the culture has collapsed. I have seen similar worms in an old worm composting that I used to have, but later I never saw them again.

I hope you get success with the culture. In my situation, even if I had some outcome, my Betta could not catch all of them... the food must fluctuate for several minutes or the live food must be something such as an Artemia, which can swim frenetically for a few hours, and this empolgates him. Despite this, I have always found them interesting organisms.

 

[sharkweek178]

I had/have two problems with white worms: first mite or gnats get into the culture and 2nd i could never figure out how to harvest them. I still have the cultures though i'm on the verge of throwing them out.

I feed them oat meal cause everyone but me likes oat meal.

I had a problem with mites in my grindal culture too. I couldn't figure out how they got in. I kept the cultures sealed up pretty good in plastic food containers and the air holes had coffee filter taped over them. Then it hit me. The food. I was feeding them kitten food but I didn't keep that in airtight containers. Mites hitchhiked in on the kitten food. So I got some air tight containers for my worm food. That seemed to have solved that. And sometimes I put their food in the freezer for a day just to make sure.

 

[anewbie]

If you're talking about newspaper ink, most use soybean based 1s now. I never used colored newsprint for worms or bird cages.

I'm curious about this - i'm talking about the chemical smell on my hands when i read the local paper but i live in teh south - i know there are a lot of different printing technique though i suspect it depends a bit on region and ethnic.

 

[fishorama]

Well, I did/do live in 3 different states over 40 years that used soy ink, so maybe it's not country-wide or international standard? I remember when I had pet birds & worked with wild 1s black ink was ok but colored couldn't be on the top layer or if they might chew it. It was before internet info, I don't have any links to articles, but it seems like soon after we moved to DE there was something about switching to the "more environment friendly/safer" soy based ink. That was 40 years ago, lol

Maybe you're sensitive to the ink, I know I hate shiny ad magazine smell. Different paper prep? I guess I thought all newsprint paper was pretty much the same, I could be wrong. I sort of remember more "wood pulp" bits long ago in very cheap paper. Grade school?

You & I might be some of the few actual newspaper readers left!! You could try calling & asking if they use soy ink. Might be good for an operator laugh if nothing more helpful.

...& I still am not positive that soy ink is fish safe, but it is compost safe AFAIK. All I can say is that for the couple years I grew white worms no fish seemed adversely affected. But I only fed worms once/week or so when I did laundry in the basement where they lived...they mostly only got fed then too. My discus & larger loaches loved them, but they were all spoiled for food choices.

I know I will never try red wiggler worms again. They lived in a tub of soil & ate veggie scraps (also in the basement). They smelled awful & tiny biting flies soon appeared. Adult worms were too big almost all my fish. I think I "released" them into the wild but they're native many places, I have no guilt.