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Freddy 01-06-2010 11:04 PM

How to culture whiteworms
Here's an easy way to get live food for your fish. Good luck!:-)

There are several steps.

Step 1: Buy a culture. You can get one from a friend who has an existing culture, or buy it online. None of my LFS have whiteworms, but maybe yours does.

Step 2: Put the worms where you want them. You should have peat or something similar, pretty much any dirt will work as long as it doesn't have any chemicals in it and is moist to damp, but NOT wet. Put the soil in a container, I use a ziploc container, but the walls don't seem to be high enough. It's easiest to harvest the worms from the walls.Once you have put the worms in, spritz the culture with water until it is considerably moist. Have a lid. Poke holes in the lid, and make sure the lid is tight-fitting. Just don't make the holes too big, or worms will crawl out and/or mites will come in and invade the culture, and you will have to salvage some worms and start a new culture.

Step 3: Feed the culture. Bread soaked in milk is excellent food, and when the culture is at the "harvesting stage", you can feed them a little meat, so the fish get protein. Just don't overfeed. In the first few weeks, the culture will not eat all of the food, and it will become moldy. Remove it after about 5 days, and replace it.

Step 4: Harvesting stage. When the worms finish the bread before it becomes moldy, your culture is at the harvesting stage. Your culture should be swarming with worms all over the bread now. Now, add some more bread, with meat underneath. I used turkey breast, deli sliced, and I shredded it with my hands. You don't need much. You can now harvest some worms, but leave the majority. This step is usually about 5-6 weeks into caring for your culture.

Step 5: Daily harvesting. This is an aged culture. You can now give cultures to friends, or sell cultures online, with a portion of the worms from your culture. Don't actually harvest daily, harvest about once every 3 days. Eventually you can harvest every 2 days, but don't do that until your culture is well aged.
Consider buying a feeder cone for your fish. Worms can only poke out of the slots, waving in the water until your fish snatch them up! Discus especially love these.

Your culture is now perfectly aged! You can now regularly harvest and feed to fish. You can also start new cultures for yourself, and feed huge numbers of small fish, which is good if you're a breeder. Good luck to all who try this!:-)


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