xxianxx
Well-known member
I have posted this thread in the axolotl section as many of you won't think to look in the live food bit and will miss out on an excellent food for baby axolotls which is very easily cultured. There are numerous ways to culture whiteworm (ww), I will explain mine and give you some tips on how to harvest them, as even some of the experienced keepers rely on picking worms out of their medium with tweezers......
An established culture of ww will consist of adult worms of approx 1cm down to baby ones you can barely see, so you have a handy size range, adults can be chopped with a razor if you want to and they will survive for a while in a tank.
The first thing you need to familiarise your self with is the basic care requirements
1) substrate, I use organic compost
2)temp, ww prefer it cool, 10-20c, summer heat can cause die offs, below 10c slows the reproduction rate down
3) moisture level, damp but not soggy
4)food, I use damp oats, the consistency of thick porridge
5)container, can be a 1 liter tub or a 50 liter tub, its up to you depending on the volume of worm required
Fill your container up with substrate , can be a few inches deep or a foot, its up to you, bury some oats, add your ww starter culture, ignore for a few weeks, add more oats as required. Store somewhere cool, the culture may start to smell as the oats ferment so don't keep them in the house.
I have 3x45 liter tubs,3x55 liter tubs and several small reserve cultures for visiting friends who generally rob me. I use a hand full of pure worm per day and the cost is 2 kg of cheap oats per week, costing the same as a couple packs of frozen bloodworm so its a very cheap food source. Its important to have a couple of cultures on the go at the same time, this will allow you to experiment with moisture levels etc to hit upon the ideal conditions. Very small differences in care can lead to vastly different yields.
Once you have established a sustainable culture, which can take a few weeks, you have to consider how to harvest them, there are several methods
1)pick the ww out of the substrate by hand.... Time consuming unless you only have a couple of larvae to feed
2)place a sheet of glass on top of the substrate, bait it with fine oatmeal, scrape the worms off when required
3)ww will congregate around the buried oats, scrape them off without taking to much of the oats with them
4)grab a hand full of substrate with a high concentration of worm and drop it in a tank, remove once the worms have been consumed
5)if you want to collect large numbers of ww or don't want compost in your tank this is the method. Take several handfuls of substrate with high levels of worm and/or scrape them off the oats, drop this into a tub of dechlorinated water, stir it up, allow the worms to settle, pour away the dirty water, repeat several times until the bulk of the compost has gone. You will be left with some sludge and a load of ww. Leave the sludge with a small amount of water covering it for 30 mins. Some of the worms will try to escape up the side of the tub, scrape them off with a credit card and feed them. The worms who remain in the water will form balls, this is a self defence mechanism which can be used against them as it makes them easier to collect with a big pair of tweezers. After you have harvested what you need you can leave the tub for the following day, the worms who are still in the tub will be dead within 24 hours and will lie on the surface of the sludge and are easily collected with tweasers or poured off and rinsed, the dead worms are readily eaten by larvae old enough to take non moving foods, just don't leave them in a warm spot as they go bad fast. Ww actually survive several days in a tank, I think the bacteria in the compost strip the oxygen out and they suffocate. Though I am happy to be corrected if this is not the case.
Whilst ww make a good food they are high in fat and should be used as part of a mixed diet and not a staple. I feed ww to sixteen separate species at various stages of their lives, axolotl get them up to 3", alpine newts from larvae to adults in both aquatic and terrestrial stages, you can culture whiteworm inside a terrestrial tank if you are feeling lazy. The ww setup I have described can be used to culture several other food sources for a variety of terrestrial and aquatic amphibians, namely dendro worms who do very well on oats, springtails and fruitflies. I don't harvest the fruitflies, I just leave a tub out for them with fruitfly media in, they lay their eggs in it, I then feed the maggots or resulting flies.
If you research other substrates and food types for ww you may find other methods which you prefer, I have just shared my own style of raising this useful food.
An established culture of ww will consist of adult worms of approx 1cm down to baby ones you can barely see, so you have a handy size range, adults can be chopped with a razor if you want to and they will survive for a while in a tank.
The first thing you need to familiarise your self with is the basic care requirements
1) substrate, I use organic compost
2)temp, ww prefer it cool, 10-20c, summer heat can cause die offs, below 10c slows the reproduction rate down
3) moisture level, damp but not soggy
4)food, I use damp oats, the consistency of thick porridge
5)container, can be a 1 liter tub or a 50 liter tub, its up to you depending on the volume of worm required
Fill your container up with substrate , can be a few inches deep or a foot, its up to you, bury some oats, add your ww starter culture, ignore for a few weeks, add more oats as required. Store somewhere cool, the culture may start to smell as the oats ferment so don't keep them in the house.
I have 3x45 liter tubs,3x55 liter tubs and several small reserve cultures for visiting friends who generally rob me. I use a hand full of pure worm per day and the cost is 2 kg of cheap oats per week, costing the same as a couple packs of frozen bloodworm so its a very cheap food source. Its important to have a couple of cultures on the go at the same time, this will allow you to experiment with moisture levels etc to hit upon the ideal conditions. Very small differences in care can lead to vastly different yields.
Once you have established a sustainable culture, which can take a few weeks, you have to consider how to harvest them, there are several methods
1)pick the ww out of the substrate by hand.... Time consuming unless you only have a couple of larvae to feed
2)place a sheet of glass on top of the substrate, bait it with fine oatmeal, scrape the worms off when required
3)ww will congregate around the buried oats, scrape them off without taking to much of the oats with them
4)grab a hand full of substrate with a high concentration of worm and drop it in a tank, remove once the worms have been consumed
5)if you want to collect large numbers of ww or don't want compost in your tank this is the method. Take several handfuls of substrate with high levels of worm and/or scrape them off the oats, drop this into a tub of dechlorinated water, stir it up, allow the worms to settle, pour away the dirty water, repeat several times until the bulk of the compost has gone. You will be left with some sludge and a load of ww. Leave the sludge with a small amount of water covering it for 30 mins. Some of the worms will try to escape up the side of the tub, scrape them off with a credit card and feed them. The worms who remain in the water will form balls, this is a self defence mechanism which can be used against them as it makes them easier to collect with a big pair of tweezers. After you have harvested what you need you can leave the tub for the following day, the worms who are still in the tub will be dead within 24 hours and will lie on the surface of the sludge and are easily collected with tweasers or poured off and rinsed, the dead worms are readily eaten by larvae old enough to take non moving foods, just don't leave them in a warm spot as they go bad fast. Ww actually survive several days in a tank, I think the bacteria in the compost strip the oxygen out and they suffocate. Though I am happy to be corrected if this is not the case.
Whilst ww make a good food they are high in fat and should be used as part of a mixed diet and not a staple. I feed ww to sixteen separate species at various stages of their lives, axolotl get them up to 3", alpine newts from larvae to adults in both aquatic and terrestrial stages, you can culture whiteworm inside a terrestrial tank if you are feeling lazy. The ww setup I have described can be used to culture several other food sources for a variety of terrestrial and aquatic amphibians, namely dendro worms who do very well on oats, springtails and fruitflies. I don't harvest the fruitflies, I just leave a tub out for them with fruitfly media in, they lay their eggs in it, I then feed the maggots or resulting flies.
If you research other substrates and food types for ww you may find other methods which you prefer, I have just shared my own style of raising this useful food.
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