Breeding Blackworms

[Flutter]

I'm going to set up a blackworm breeding tank tomorrow. Who knows how it will go I've read a bit about it and I'm going to try going with the method of perhaps a tiny bit of substrate and feeding fish food. Many seem to feed them paper towels or burlap but that doesn't sound overly nutritious to me. The worms are looking a little thin right now, they're probably getting near the end of their fridge life.

Has anyone done this before and have any success stories or tips? It would be great if they would breed enough so that we can feed the discus, their tank mates and the bettas several times a week and the puffers once or twice a week. The rest of the time the puffers can get crays, shrimp, home made food, and frozen seafood.

These darn fish eat WAY better than we do that's for sure

[J-P]

they will reproduce be splitting then in half...

each half will grow back apparently.. where did you get them??

[Flutter]

Yep, apparently they reproduce sexually but it's very rare. This is why I'm thinking about having a bit of gravel in there. Perhaps giving it a stir during cleaning would help break them up. Who knows though, I've read so many different things.

We got them at the Hamilton BAs. They have them regularly. I think someone more local imports them too, if you're interested I can get his contact info for you. They're just so expensive that I don't want to buy them regularly. It could be a fun project.

[I.Puff.Too]

Flutter, please update sometime in the future and let me know how it goes. I'm currently trying to get some wild caught fiddlers to breed, only had them about a month and no luck yet.

[J-P]

I contacted Carl's in Toronto and he never e-mailed me back. There was also a bulk supplier with a REALLY good price on the west coast but they sold out and haven't heard from them either.

For breeding, I was shown one of those little plastic chests that you can buy at the hardware store. You drill some holes in it and mesh it for water flow (like a trickle filter) and have some medium coarse gravel in there. I was going to use window screening for the mesh. Stir the gravel to break them up. The water trickles to the bottom drawer and use a small pump to repeat the process.

RTR also has a small breeder operation going for a while. If you search you'll find it. It was regarding feeding a DP live black worms.

[Flutter]

I'll search tomorrow unless someone else wants to search for it in the meantime.

I'm planning on keeping it very low key. 3.5gal tank, a layer of gravel, and fish food. If they can't get through window screen then we could rig something up in the cray tank as that is filtered. Tempting, could put a little breeding box in each tank... Hmmm... J-P, you're not good at doing things at a small scale are you! Now you have me wanting to take things too far

If I get anything interesting or successful I'll definitely share it. Perhaps it'll be a little project for me this summer.

[RTR]

I did try breeding, but the upkeep was horrendous.

The paper towel (unbleached brown rough towels) avtually worked the best, but was a pita. Thin sugar sand worked with less upkeep, but ate containers. 10 plastic shoe boxes did not provide enough for my smallish use for the rainbows. "way too much work for the output and the project was abandoned as impractical. I could not keep the potting shed cool enough in summer, and it smelled badly.

I believe that the worms do not eat the towels, they eat the bacteria, etc which eat the towels and worm wastes. the towels just give bacterial substrates and traction for the barely water-covered worms.

For what it is worth - not much.

Edit: i got some info originally from the Califonia Blackworm site, but the info is no longer posted there. I also got info from Carolina Biologicals - they offer a lot of recent info on culturing oddballs.

[Flutter]

Of course life intervened and through me a twist last weekend. So, going to start the project this weekend. We have two small containers with holes in the sides. I'll cover the holes with screen and then put a double layer of holey burlap in the bottom. I may then cover this with some gravel or sand to help keep things darker. One container will be hung in the new irrubesco tank and the other either in the cray tank or the discus tank.

I'll post pictures in a couple days once the glue has set and I can get these things in the water. So far they're still alive and doing fine in the fridge though they've been in there a lot longer than I would have preferred.