Lost my WHOLE Whiteworm culture!

I was just about to head out for the night and thought, I gotta feed my newts real quick. I went to my garage where the culture is kept, havent checked em in 3 days, so when I got there I popped open the lid and a huge swarm of bugs (gnats or squitos) went right at my face. I took off and went back a few mins later and ALL of my worms are dead and gone.

I kept em in a white gallon tub with a lid and 1 hole in the center screwdriver sized. I used potting soil with some local dirt and leaves buried and I put fresh bread in there every three days. Everything was fine. Ive noticed its been getting hot here lately but I dont know what happened. The soil had a thick layer of grime or mud and stunk like trash. This pisses me off so much cause now I gotta buy more live blackworms than before and if you see my previous thread, its robbery.

I guess I gotta get them hooked to frozed bloodworms.


(Message edited by jennewt on April 22, 2007)

Could it be that you fed the worms more than they could handle? Fresh bread every 3 days seems a bit much to me, depending on how big your culture was.

Bread every 3 days sounds OK to me, as long as the piece of bread was small enough to be mostly eaten within that time. I'm thinking maybe they got too hot. I don't know exactly what their tolerance is (nor what the garage temp was), but they like cool conditions.

Yea I was giving them about 1/4 - 2/4 of a slice of bread every 3 days.

I guess the heat killed them... great.

Grindals can be kept at higher temperatures than whiteworms (although grindals are smaller). I wouldn't use dirt from outdoors in the medium either, there's too many greeblies that can eat/compete with white or grindal worms. Earthworms are easy too and aren't bothered as much by other insects, I keep them in open styro boxes and feed them table scraps.