Soil-less Grindal Worm culture

[jane1187]

Just been reading this old post on Killifish blog about how to set up a soil-less grindal worm culture. You simply put the worms on a sponge or filter-wool/pad in a plastic container and feed them as normal beneath a piece of glass or clear plastic. There is no soil. You then put 1-2mm of water in the bottom of the container to keep the sponge moist and apparently 'voila!'.

I am going to give it a go myself, as I cannot for the life of me keep my soil at the correct moisture level, and this moisture source is much easier to control for me.

I have reservationsabout using this with whiteworms and don't think it would work as you need a place for the eggs to be laid, and the white worms are too large... But with grindal worms apparently it's easy.

Wish me luck!

 

[Cliff]

I have tried this with white worms (with green plastic scourer things), I had problems with too much humidity/ not enough ventilation so it was either too wet or lack of air I think..
But I plan on trying again in the future!

 

[jane1187]

Really? Wow I'll have to give white worms a go then after I have success with Grindal worms and keep an eye on the humidity?

 

[kenya_1977]

I work at an endangered fish hatchery and we have been culturing grindal worms on soilless set ups for a while.

1. This set up is more like a biosystem as an aquarium is, so it can crash if you don't keep it rinsed daily the first month or so. I recommend keeping up with the rinsing though.

2. These produced great for me the first year. As long as we were rinsing them just about daily (skipping only a day or so on the weekend) they didn't have a problems with mites and 12 cultures produced plenty of grindals for twice a day feedings of the thousands of small fish we have.

3. We stopped rinsing the cultures daily due to some employee complaints that it was "time consuming". Within a few months most of the cultures crashed due to heavy mite infestations.

So, although the soil cultures definitely require less attention, they can tend to get mites easily and there is very little you can do about it to get rid of them. I have found that the soilless cultures are far more stable when rinsed daily and we never had a culture crash due to mites under these procedures.

Just been reading this old post on Killifish blog about how to set up a soil-less grindal worm culture. You simply put the worms on a sponge or filter-wool/pad in a plastic container and feed them as normal beneath a piece of glass or clear plastic. There is no soil. You then put 1-2mm of water in the bottom of the container to keep the sponge moist and apparently 'voila!'.

I am going to give it a go myself, as I cannot for the life of me keep my soil at the correct moisture level, and this moisture source is much easier to control for me.

I have reservationsabout using this with whiteworms and don't think it would work as you need a place for the eggs to be laid, and the white worms are too large... But with grindal worms apparently it's easy.

Wish me luck!

 

[2darescue]

Need to ask. Need a source for grindal culture? Think I'll give them a go. Thanks.