Worms are an excellent first food source for small fish like Bettas and Guppies. Culture can be kept thriving continuously with very little effort and little outlay. If you produce large enough quantities, you can even sell your own starter cultures.
Setting up your first culture
1. Buy a starter culture from other breeders or online stores. They are not usually available in pet stores.
2. You will need a container with a tight-fitting lid. A 2 liter ice cream tub is ideal.
3. The lid should fit well as worms climb up the sides and you certainly wouldn’t want them to escape but you should also make some holes in the lid so they can breathe.
4. Dried potatoes, instant oatmeal, or porridge are usually the best options to eat because they’re cheap and readily available, but worms aren’t usually picky eaters.
5. Fill your tub with your chosen food to about 1 inch deep then add warm water to make a thick paste. You want it to be firm but not dry.
6. Once cooled to room temperature, spread your starter culture all over the surface of the food and you’re good to go. It usually takes about a week before your crop is established enough to start harvesting. Temperature will also play a role in the growth rate of the crop, the warmer it is the faster the worms will multiply. The culture may smell a bit, but it shouldn’t be offensive. There should also be no signs of mold if your crop is healthy.
harvesting your worms
The worms will climb up the side of your container, making it easy to harvest them with a minimum of fuss. Use a spoon, trowel, or dull knife to scrape down the side of the container. Soak this in some cool water and any food will be rinsed away from the worms. The worms can then be collected from the bottom with a pipette and fed directly to your fry. The worms will live for around 5 hours in the water and their movement will prompt your fry to eat.
Keeping your culture alive
After about 4-6 weeks, depending on the temperature, your crop will start to decompose. It will start to have more fluid and start to smell, the number of worms may also start to decrease. Now you need to restart your culture. Prepare a new tub of food just like you did when you first got your worms. Scrape about a quarter of your existing culture into your new food and again this will start to thrive as before. Do not discard the rest of your original culture until you are sure the new one is established.
Sale of starter cultures
If you want to sell starter cultures, don’t use the residuals from the restart. Leftover culture should either be discarded or used to create a series of cultures as well as your personal use. 2-3 tablespoons of an active established culture is more than enough for anyone else to create their own, but only use a healthy established culture that has more than a week left before it turns dirty if you decide to sell it. This will ensure that the customer receives thriving worms that will reproduce quickly compared to a dying crop.
There are numerous foods that can be used for these worm cultures, including the addition of yeast or banana, but they are not really necessary and the simplest foods are dry potatoes or instant oatmeal. Micro worms and the other smaller worms are easy to keep and low maintenance regardless of the chosen food source. They are a great way to provide live food at the most critical time of fry development, but also keep in mind that they are not nutritionally complete and the fry will need alternative feeds as they grow.