What do you feed your white worms

[Guppysnail]

My cultures are thriving. I’ve had to split them but I rarely see them eat. It makes collecting harder because they are everywhere vs being near food like my grindal worms. 

Things I’ve tried that eventually disappear 

xtreme and ocean nutrition wafers, science diet cat food (I soak all these in vitachem,seachem nourish and water until soft or they do not get eaten. 
 

Things they refuse to touch

bread dry/soaked in milk 🤢stinky/ soaked in vitamin liquid mix

@Torrey said they have luck with veggies. They don’t eat them until rotten and stinky but still don’t actively congregate. 
 

I use coconut coir as substrate. My grindal worms swarm the food and crawl on a plastic cover I lay over the food.  The white worms do not.  
 

I know @Odd Duck has mentioned fish food.

. @mountaintoppufferkeeper I seen your mass cultures on scrubby pads. I want to convert from coconut to the pads. Do you just rinse to clean?  Can you walk me through how to convert and your husbandry please. 
 

Anyone else have magic food or collection methods. I hand feed one at a time for some fish so it does not need to be gobs but chasing individual worms through substrate is a pita. When I want to feed other bottom dwellers it is a downright nuisance chasing one worm at a time in the substrate. 
 

I just split these so not as dense.  I now have a drawer full. But you can see they are everywhere that is not food??? Most dove down when I as rattling containers  

here are my grindal worms. They are so easy in comparison. I have Badis badis that only eat live worms (turn their snoot up at bbs🙄) so this is a several times a week chase. 

Thanks all 🤗

Edited October 6, 2022 by Guppysnail

[Snjchris]

This is one method I am starting with: 

 

[Guppysnail]

@Snjchris  I seen that but the specialty yogurt I was very unclear on and I was hoping to find some thing I didn’t have to invest a lot of money in and that yogurt sounded expensive. I live in rural Hicksville so our grocery doesn’t carry exotic things. Until three years ago hummus was considered exotic and I couldn’t get it in the grocery🤣

Edited October 6, 2022 by Guppysnail

[Snjchris]

On 10/6/2022 at 9:49 AM, Guppysnail said:

@Snjchris  I seen that but the specialty yogurt I was very unclear on and I was hoping to find some thing I didn’t have to invest a lot of money in and that yogurt sounded expensive. I live in rural Hicksville so our grocery doesn’t carry exotic things. Until three years ago hummus was considered exotic and I couldn’t get it in the grocery🤣

I see. I have been using the cheapest whole milk yogurt I can find and it has been working. No special flavoring. Hope you can find some cheap options near you! 

[mountaintoppufferkeeper]

@Guppysnail right there with you on the grocery store. Our independent one is a 15 minute drive from the house. It's an hour trip to a Walmart though.  

 do the grindal on scrubby pads

Fill the container with green pads (no additives or scents of course) and leave the top center open for the food and starter worms. These are just those black plastic lunch / food containers. I cut the corner out of the top and superglue gel papertowl over the hole to give a little air exchange. I use that cut out as my plastic covering the kibble food and that is where the worms are congregated in this photo.  3 layers of scrubby pads then a scrubby pad cut in half so there is a 1/2" strip where I can put the food. I do this so the plastic rests on the pads and the food. 

I normally feed kibble soak it in water a bit put that center part of the pads and sprinkle it with nutritional yeast or fish flake powder. I just crush it my fingers to get powder. 

I put the plastic cover over the food and just harvest grindal off that. Replace food as needed and I pour distilled water over the top of the pads then pour out the excess every few weeks. No smell normally. If I harvest the worms off the plastic only I can feed from each culture every 3rd day. 

 

White worms I do with needle point mesh sheets over Coco fiber. Food is bread wet  with water or regular plain yogurt then nutritional yeast yeast down. I havent had cool enough temperatures To get the whiteworms to work on the pads but in theory they should work the same way.

Whiteworms  for me like way more wet and 60⁰ but the needle point mesh like Walmart etc sells normally gets them to concentrate below the food and on the mesh for me. I dip in water them rinse and feed. Whiteworm gif Big hits with 1/4" puffer fry :)

 

Edited October 7, 2022 by mountaintoppufferkeeper

[Odd Duck]

I’ve fed many different things to the whiteworms from soaked (milk or water) stale bread, wetted stale fish food, dog food, yogurt, cooked oatmeal, etc.  They seem to like it better when I soak whatever dry food with green water.  If I was going to feed yogurt regularly or to a lot of cultures, I would buy the cheapest live-culture yogurt I could find. Or whatever you can get. Mine seem to do best with alternating between foods so I switch out randomly depending on what I have.

I tried the scrubby pad technique and managed to get things too wet and my cultures crashed bad! I just recently started over on Grindals and whiteworms.  I make sure to get whiteworms that are “warm acclimated” so I don’t have to chill them. I’m going to try the whiteworms with one on coir and one on scrubby pads and see how they do.

I also use the craft mesh for whiteworms like @mountaintoppufferkeeper.  When the cultures are happy and doing well, they will crawl up the sides of the container or be on or under the mesh and they are easier to grab. I haven’t managed to get the crazy abundant numbers some show in videos.

Grindals are easier to harvest from smooth plastic pieces for me.  I feed under the plastic bits, lift and harvest.