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Microworms and Walter worms
Update coming soon....after reading a very interesting
article about these in the Journal of the American Killifish
Association, I tried these on potato flakes, which work quite well, but
were a bit more prone to serious stinkage at times, so I am back to my
baby cereal cultures.
These are very small, but at 1-2 mm long, are visible as tiny threads
in the water when you feed them to your tanks. The fry of most
fish can take these soon after hatching: they're considerably
smaller in diameter than even newly hatched baby brine shrimp.
They do fall rather quickly to the bottom of the tank, though, so top
swimming fry may not get enough of them. I've had two different
varieties that are available locally, and now only keep so-called
"Walter worms". These are a type of microworm that spend more
time in the water column before they sink than do regular microworms
(click here to see an experimental
demonstration of the difference).
I cultivate these on a mix I learned from Al Andersen's
talk on live foods at the MASI show in 2003: gerber instant
oatmeal or mixed grain cereal plus a bit of brewers yeast plus a little
instant dried yeast (about a pinch of instant yeast plus a tablespoon
of brewers yeast to a cup of cereal). I think the worms are
supposed to eat the live (activated)
yeast, which feeds on the cereal and brewers' yeast. I make
this up in bulk and just add equal parts mix and
water to a clean dish, so that it is a thick paste like this:
I place a dollop of this in a small plastic container, and add a few
drops of liquid from an earlier culture. As the culture matures,
it will get thinner and darker , and that is normal.
After
reading a very interesting
article about these in the Journal of the American Killifish
Association, I tried these on potato flakes for the first time a few
weeks ago, and they worked great, but the smell got nastier quickly, so
I have gone back to the baby cereal. I now do it simpler and add
the cereal mix to the container and water to that, without using an
intermediate step of mixing it up in bulk in the bowl.
After about a few days to a week, the worms start crawling up the side
of the
containers. The cultures are harvested daily by wiping
the worms off the side of the container with a finger and kept going
until the yields
drop, usually for about 3 weeks. I looked through the cheap
disposable containers at the grocery store to find some that I could
stack in a small container, because the easily harvestable worms come
from the sides of the container, as here above
the red line:
where I rub them off daily with my finger to feed the fish (you can use
a rubber scraper or a popsicle stick for this part if you're squeamish,
or your hands are dirty):
There are more worms living in the lower part of the culture, but
harvesting them leads to putting a lot of cereal debris in my
tanks. So I prefer to use multiple small containers, here trying
to get the maximum amount of side-wall surface for harvesting.
Yogurt containers and margerine tubs are often used, but I found some
little disposable cups that fit stacked in a box so they're easy to
handle. I poke holes in the lid with a pushpin for air exchange,
but be sure the holes are small or fruit flies can find their way in
(very very messy). These worms do fine, by the way, whether they
are kept in a light or a dark place.
After swiping the wall of the container, I swirl my finger in a clean
cup of water. Then I rinse the worms through a brine shrimp next
to get rid of the cloudy cereal debris. I swirl
the containers daily to recoat the sides of the container after I take
off
the worms, which seems to encourage the worms to climb up the sides for
easy harvest. When the culture turns darker and fewer worms come
out, despite being stirred/swirled daily, I dump it and start a new
one, usually every 2-3 weeks. There are typically 2-3 fresh, 2-3
medium, and 2-3 older cultures going at any one time, and still I don't
get very many worms at once, but fortunately the little fish that need
these don't need a lot of them to grow .
Sometimes a little skin of yeast or bacteria grows on top of the
culture, but does not harm the worms, and the flakes of it that end up
floating on top of the water are easily poured off before the worms are
poured into the net for rinsing:
If you don't see lots of worms on the side of the container, don't
despair. They're probably still in there. If you swirl the
culture and look at the surface closely, it should
look like it is moving or bubbling, like this:
Looking a little closer up (this requires a magnifier) you start to see
the individual worms swimming at the surface:
And here they are climbing up the wall of the culture:
Jack noted that stirring some puffed rice cereal (not rice krispies,
but puffed rice) into an older microworm culture can keep it going for
weeks more.
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