Live food observations

[fish_4_all]

This is just some general observation I have had with some live foods.

Grindal worms: prefer cooler temps below 80 degrees and love mixed dry baby food just mixed to the point of being like putty. Easy to harvest and fish eat them readily.
White worms: prefer cooler temps and love baby cereal in same consistency as grindals. Almost impossible to harvest reliably.
Vinegar eels: Seem to do best in a large open container with a lot of surface area for air exchange. Holes in the lid seem to have the effect of a population explosion. Very little vinegar smell is ever noticed with smaller holes. Easy to harvest when ready and provide 3 days worth of fry food per harvest using test tube and filter floss method. 3:1 vinegar to water mix seems to increase production although not a certain factor, personally I think that fresh air is a key to production numbers, very little apple needed per culture, I now use only 1/8 of a small apple per 2 quart container.
Microworms: easy to produce but hard to keep up with. Cultures crash readily in warmer temps. No media produced better than others but cornmeal lead to crash of all cultures due to massive mold outbreak. Not a recommended source for reliable food unless you have a temperature controlled environment.

All worms need a temperature controlled environment to produce the best they can. High temperature seem to stunt the growth rate and reproduction.

Will be trying confused flour beetles or micro mealworms as soon as I can get a container that will certainly keep them out of the flour or my wife would kill me.

Put your experiences here with live food so others can reap the benefits and see how easy some them really are to cultivate.

 

[TCTFish]

I had bred crickets and was overwhelmed with it's success.

I used the lid of a baby wipes container and filled it with damp potting soil and placed it in a tank with a few dozen adult crickets. After a few days, I took the lid of soil out and placed it in a square plastic 1/4 gallon container with pinholes poked at the top. I sprayed the container once or twice a week depending on present humidity. I also placed the lid with fresh soil in the tank again and did that a total of three times. About a month later, I ended up with THOUSANDS of pinhead crickets. I guess one lid full of soil would have been enough...LOL. I counted up to six thousand and didn't even come close to counting half the batch. OMG!! But makes great food for a lot of fish. If one can get themselves a schedule going to where they have crickets all the time, may even have enough surplus to get some credit at stores that sell crickets.

FYI, in case you ever try mealworms...their sizes are controlled through food. I live near a bug farm where crickets, mealworms, waxworms, as well as red worms and earthworms are bred and sold. I got a tour around the place one day when I was there getting a large order of mealworms for a school.

The difference between the size of small mealworms and large mealworms is the feed. A batch of small mealworms are given a special hormone feed that makes them big. Then some of those are given another special feed that makes them into the super worms that do not require refridgeration to dorment metamorphisis. So basically, the only real true formed mealworms are the little guys. All the other sizes are hormonally induced through food. All of them except the super worms are kept in large temp controlled rooms; generally cool, but not cold. They have a warmer room for their breeding stock to change into beetles.

 

[BillD]

I have been raising white worms from the same culture for about 12 years. I don't understand the " almost impossible to harvest reliably". I use bread crumbs as a feed. It doesn't have to be fine. sometimes, I will just crush dried bread with my hands. fresh bread tends to grow moldy, the bread crumbs don't. A spray of water helps to moisten the dry bread crumbs. A healthy white worm culture will seem like there is as much white worm as soil. Harvesting is easy. A day before you plan to feed them to the fish, you remove a portion of soil to a container, such as a styro cup or small plastic food container, and leave it sit over night. As the soil dries out the worms will form a ball, to keep from drying out. Basically, they seperate themselves from the soil, and there is little or no soil in the ball. Any unfed worms can be put back into the culture. I have tried other feeds such as cooked oatmeal, but nothing will bring a culture along like bread crumbs. I think that is partly because you can spread it over the entire surface of the soil. I use 8lb margarine containers for the cultures. I have found they can tolerate warmer temps than are sometimes recommend (mid to high 70s). Eventually, the culture will sour. This is indicated by the worms leaving the container en masse. At this point they can be transferred to fresh soil. Cheap potting or topsoil, without added peat moss is preferred, as they don't care for an acid environment.