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Tubifex worm farm experiment!

suztor

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Nearly 3 months ago I bought 5 tablespoons of tubifex worms and have kept them in my fridge with between 1 -2 inches of water with week/week and half full water changes. I've read they last maybe 2 weeks in the fridge?! musta gotten a lucky batch.

I'm keeping a 10 gal tank in my garage (it's cooling off here) as my 'grow' tank. It has a florescent light on 24/7. I'm trying to grow some java moss (from a weak half dead clump I was given) and java fern (got some little sprouts) and a water lily from a bulb. I'm thinking the bulb isn't going to happen though.

I've done a little reading and am going to experiment culturing my own tubifex worms

I have the tank 2/3 full of water with a simple established sponge filter near the top higher than most of the worms can stretch out to. I don't want them clumping in my filter sponge. I put some pebble gravel and those black polished river rock in the bottom barely enough to cover the bottom and placed about 1/2 (3/4tblsp) of my current fridge culture of worms in there. There is plenty of dead plant debris and left over 'crud' from when I had fish in there to probably keep them fed, I'll throw in the occasional expired bottom dweller pellet to supplement.

My goal is to do a 10-20% water change a week and see if my culture takes off.

I've read that as long as the water isn't too cold and that the water is in some way aerated, water depth is not an issue with tubifex worms.

Comments? Suggestions? Your own methods? Talk to me!:p
 

Jennewt

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Would I be correct to assume that these are blackworms? Actually tubifex and blackworms are very different, although they look and behave similar.

I don't think that the water being too cold would ever be a problem. You are correct that it needs to be well oxygenated.

Let us know how it goes!
 

suztor

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After doing some reading they probably are black worms. Which either way is fine. They are just slower at reproducing, from what I've gathered.

I'm pretty excited about cultureing worms at this scale lol.

My bf thinks I'm so strange, but he just shakes his head and let's me do my thing. He knows it makes me happy... Farming worms and raising 'slimy' critters.

Sent from my ADR6300 using Tapatalk
 

suztor

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after even more additional reading I decided to add 1 cm of sand to the worm tank....

Is it weird that I find it cute that a bunch of them are half buried sticking out of the sand like some sort of sea worm.... ?:p
 

suztor

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Unfortunantly it didn't work all too well... I need to buy more lol

But...

I thought I had killed everything and just left the tank unattended over the winter in the garage to find that I had 50 or so "big fat" worms in there.

sent from my incredible...mind
 
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