Culturing Live Black Worms

[mitch25]

Hi everyone,

Like many others (Including Les sr) I have a horrible algae to blood worms. A great alternative is live black worms. 

Usually, black worms don't live very long, need to be kept in the fridge and need daily water changes... 

I've tried to culture them in a 2.5 gallon tank, kept at room temp, with a diy sponge filter and bubbler.

So far, things seem to be going very well, I feed a little bit of flake food and do a water change about biweekly. 







I put some polyester batting to seed the tank with good bacteria and provide some food. I don't recommend doing this as the worms get trapped in it. 

I don't see them "breeding" in there but I think they are actually multiplying through clonal fragmentation.

If things keep going well I will give out free worms to people who want to give it a try at club meetings. 

Thanks again to Les sr for giving me this starter culture!

[gabor129]

Excellent way to introduce yet another live food to your fish!

I have something similar on the go! I introduced an ounce of worms into one of my tanks about four months ago! Since then they have been living and multiplying in the substrate, much to the delight of my six albino corys living in the tank!

[mitch25]

Oh wow thats even better! The get eaten too fast in my tanks, thats awesome perfect live food.

[lesfromlakeshore]

Hey Mitch , how's this project working out ?

[mitch25]

Hey Les, I've taken a new job recently and have been so busy I couldn't keep up with everything so I had to shut the tank down, but I can confirm how easy it is to do... Just cycle a small tank, aerator and bring the worms up to room temperature.

I fed them once a week and they were growing and multiplying

[lesfromlakeshore]

Sept 5, 2016 16:59:43 GMT -5 mitch25 said:

Hey Les, I've taken a new job recently and have been so busy I couldn't keep up with everything so I had to shut the tank down, but I can confirm how easy it is to do... Just cycle a small tank, aerator and bring the worms up to room temperature.

I fed them once a week and they were growing and multiplying

Sounds easy , good luck with the new job .