White worms for food

[paul b]

IMO worms are about the best food you can feed along with clams. These foods contain bacteria "That our fish need" to stay healthy along with the fats, minerals and everything else to keep them healthy.
I hear all the time that worms are to hard to keep and they have to be kept cool. No, they don't, they want to be kept in the same temperature you live in. If you live in Death Valley and you have no AC, internet or fresh water, move.

For the rest of you that live on a volcano and the lava laps at your front door,
Can't you get a cheap Styrofoam cooler, put the worms in there with a small freezer pack and change it once a day? Suspend the freezer pack so the worms don't crawl on it. I mean Really!

Your fish don't really care if you have to go a little out of your way, especially after they were sitting there, or rather floating there, minding their own business and some Jiboni in a canoe listening to RAP music jumped near them with a huge net from Walmart and scooped them up. Ate most of them, sold some to a market that puts them in a can labeled "Dolphin Safe", and threw the rest in a bucket that he hauls gas and salami sandwiches in to a wholesaler where they sit in the sun in a cement tub with floating Toyota tires for a week with no food, then they are put in a bag and shipped over 47 hours to a store where the guy throws them in a small tank and puts a sign on them that reads $49.95, two for $50.00, and no guarantee.  :oops:

Then you come along and the guy puts them in a small bag that you keep them in for two hours while you eat at Bonefish Grill. After that you throw them in an observation tank, because they haven't been observed enough, then dip them in insect repellent, tarter sauce and gasoline to remove flukes and flounders. Then quarantine them for 6 months while feeding them expired flakes.
Lady GaGa wears a fluke dress and no one dipped her.
And you have the nerve to complain that you can't find a place to store a couple of worms.

Then you wonder why you are constantly on the disease forum with sentences that always start out with the word "HELP".

The worms don't want to freeze, just be at room temperature like 71 or so like I want to live. Where do you guys live? Mars?
My worms are in a Tupperware tub in my workshop. It is hot in there now and I don't see them sweating.
I am fed up to here with excuses. My hand is under my chin. Just get with the program and your fish will live forever with no help from you. Stop bothering them and let them be.

Start a white worm culture. All you need is a Tupperwear tub like your wife stores her underwear in. Remove her underwear and tell her the cat ate them and use the tub. Make some holes in the top in case the worms want to breathe. Put in some wet "potting soil" not top soil, not saw dust, not real dust from your vacuum cleaner, not gravel or sand. Potting soil, preferably without fertilizer. Throw in the starter culture of worms that you Google. Put in half a slice of bread, I use grain bread but I think they would eat your socks. Put some full fatted yogurt on it and wait a couple of weeks. Your neighbors will be so impressed with how many worms you have, and how often your wife has to go and buy new underwear.

Feed them to your fish and they will live for almost 5 days in salt water so mandarins, crabs and almost everything else except pipefish will feast on them. You will never again have to go on a disease thread.

[bues0022]

Once the culture is up and running, what kind of maintenance do you have to do for them? How often to feed, change potting soil, etc?

[paul b]

I feed them when the bread is gone.  Maybe every week and a half.  I lose some soil when I feed them to the fish so I replace that occasionally.

 

Maybe every few months I give them a bath.  Mostly to clean the soil and also to eliminate the mites that grow like crazy.  They are so tiny they almost look like smoke.

I flood the entire container and let it settle then pour off the top.  The mites float so they are eliminated.  That also cleans out all the worm poop. I add new soil and it smells clean again.

To dry the soil, I just put it in a net and let it drain for a minute of so.  The worms need the wet soil anyway.

My culture is going for many years now and I get way more worms than I can use. 

[newbie2014]

Your posts are always insightful and entertaining, Paul.

 

Ever since I started feeding my fish clams, they have been spawning like rabbits. Even without sump, skimmer, nor reactors; I don't do WC as often anymore. My Clarkii still spawn every week or two. My zoas, LPS and RBTA are also growing just fine, and I don't directly feed them. 

 

I just need to find some white worm colony locally.........  

[paul b]

Sounds like a successful method to me. 

[newbie2014]

Thank you. I would like to think so, too. 

This is just one of my hobbies, so I try to set it up to be as hassle-free as possible. With three small kids running around the house, the fish tank is pretty low on my priority list. But I guess if I had spent thousands on a setup and hundreds to thousands more on live stocks, then I would feel obligated to spend more money and time to keep it looking pristine. Big boat, big sail; small boat, small sail.    

 

On a side note: I suspect my royal gramma (a fish) is about to croak. I thought it died when t disappeared suddenly for about a month. Then, out of the blue, it reappeared. It comes out only during feeding time for a bite or two, then crawls back under the rock. It's kinda sad. I've had it since the beginning.    

 

  

[elbowdeep88]

Could nightcrawlers work instead of white worms? Just chop one up into like 1/4-1/2" pieces and dump it in?

[paul b]

Yes nightcrawlers are excellent foods.  You can use them whole to feed puffers, boxfish and even anemones.  They love the wriggling.  You can also freeze them.  Just be careful where you collect them, no bug poisons.

[bues0022]

Can the white worms be frozen, and fed without turning to complete mush? I make my own frozen food, and am considering putting some in my frozen mix.

[paul b]

I freeze them when I go on vacation for my tank sitter to feed them to my fish.  They don't turn to mush.  But even though they look delicious, don't eat them yourself. 

[Sharkey18]

How do you harvest them without getting a load of dirt? 

[ryanbest]

Hey, guys. It goes without saying, that there are populations, which eat different inedible for us food. I think they know what to eat, so they don't die because of it, but you, the man, who doesn't know what the worms can be eaten, can die because of them. I am talking about the bobbit worm, you can read more about them. Of course, it's your business what to eat, but I don't recommend you to eat it.

[paul b]

On 7/29/2019 at 10:28 AM, Sharkey18 said:

How do you harvest them without getting a load of dirt? 

 

After you get a really good supply of worms they climb up the sides of the box.  I put a piece of plexiglass on the food and they cling to that.

But before that, I remove some dirt with the worms and rinse it in a course net.  The worms don't go through the net and it removes "most" of the soil.  Then I rinse that a few times and put it in a container and suck out the worms with a baster.  That little bit of dirt is actually good for your tank so don't worry about it.

[GraffitiSpotCorals]

Ryanbest, I am confused, who is going to eat a bobit worm?  I gotta be there for this