Sourdough discard to feed micro worms?

[AdamS]

Has anyone tried to used the discard from sourdough to feed micro worms?  

My wife has been getting into making sourdough recipes, sometimes she makes something with the discard and sometimes it goes in the trash.  Has anyone used the discard to feed micro worms?  I realize mash potatoes and oatmeal are pretty cheap, but this is already being thrown away so it is free. 

 

[Anchor_fist]

I'm not sure but curious how this turns out, I've seen people use wheat bread before 

[jwcarlson]

Worth a shot, I suppose.  I would probably do it with a secondary culture just in case.  Not sure if the culture would be competing for food with the worms?  

[AdamS]

Absolutely, I would definitely try it with a separate culture. I was hoping someone had tried this, but if not I will give it a shot. 

[AdamS]

The culture is setup with the sourdough discard, we will find out how it works in a few days. 

[AdamS]

Day 3 update.  Probably a little too early to check but I was curious. It doesn’t look like much has happened.  I will give them another 4 days and see how they look at 7 days. 

[Sammy]

Add a little more food to the yeast maybe... I'd be surprised if that doesn't work well.

I'm interested to see how this goes...

[gardenman]

I'd be worried a bit about the alcohol produced by the starter and the pH (likely very acidic.) Alcohol is generally not conducive to life and the low pH produced could be an issue also. A used/discarded starter will likely be pretty acidic and laden with alcohol.

[AdamS]

Day 7 update - I have left them alone since Monday.  It looks like they may have perished. There doesn’t look to be any microworms…. 

[Tanked]

On 5/17/2024 at 10:16 AM, AdamS said:

Day 7 update - I have left them alone since Monday.  It looks like they may have perished. There doesn’t look to be any microworms…. 

I know very little about microworms, but I'm wondering if the alcohol or the co2 is the problem. Discard is still starter and still fermenting. if the alcohol is the issue, you might try allowing both to evaporate from the discard for several hours.  If the microworms need to be kept in a closed container; I thinking that the heavy CO2 is suffocating them.

A lot of variables there, and an interesting experiment.

[daggaz]

There shouldn't be any alcohol in the discard, you need anaerobic conditions for yeast to produce alcohol.  That alone will kill your worms.  I doubt the pH would be an issue, either, this isn't a strong acid by any means.  Strongly suspect your worms succumbed to something else, and oxygen supply would be the very first thing I would double check.  

Dumping an abundance of yeast into an aquatic environment, in the absence of aeration, will quickly deplete O2 (but not so much that you produce alcohol -you will get acetic acid in any open container over time).

In the future, if you just heat the discard and kill the yeast before hand, it would make perfect worm food.  

Edited June 19 by daggaz

[frozenfish]

I use sourdough discard on bread slices, instead of yogurt for my white worm culture. It works great, I'd say its equal to yogurt but free