Fantastic Whiteworms

Paul B

Well-Known Member
This Whiteworm culture is a few years old and the original worms were very small and skinny. In time the new generations are much longer and fatter. I don't know why. But these new worms are also much harder to separate from the soil they live in. The original worms used to swarm by the hundreds on a piece of plain cracker but these no longer like crackers or anything else that I can figure out. I feed them bread with yogurt on it along with some nutritional yeast and I am not sure they eat it as I don't find them on it like they used to be. I know they are eating something and it may be the products of decomposition from the bread as my blackworm culture does.
I Have been looking at them under a microscope with various types of food around them and so far have not seen them lick their lips at anything. Their "bellies" are full of something as I can clearly see that when magnified, I am just not sure what it is.
Whiteworms live for many hours in salt water, unlike blackworms which croak almost instantly with even a mention of salt.
These Whiteworms are a fantastic food for mandarins as I would imagine they have much more nutrition in them than pods and mandarins will eat them until they come out of their ears, if they had ears that is.
I built a whiteworm feeder for the mandarins along with my new born brine shrimp feeder because the other fish will eat the white worms before the mandarins will even blink because as we know, mandarind don't do anything fast. They are not exactly tuna.





Here is a video of the whiteworm feeder. I put the worms in the tube above the surface, they go down into the feeder and the mandarin could stay in there until he finishes every worm. Of course my copperband isn't speaking to me because whiteworms are his favorite food and he can't get them so he has to eat cake.

 

subsea

Member
Neat.

Why do you say that these worms are more nutritious than pods. I thought that marine algae’s supplied complex omega enzymes to increase nutritional value of pods. I am raising silver mollies that graze on marine algae. I feel that their nutritional value is enhanced by what they eat.
 

Paul B

Well-Known Member
I am making an assumption which may be wrong. But one of those worms probably weighs more than a hundred pods and a pod is mostly shell as it is a crustacean. A worm is all nutrition so It is a guess.
I feed the worms yogurt and nutritional yeast (not brewers yeast) but whatever they are eating, they have gotten much fatter than the original culture which were very thin.
My mandarin can only eat maybe 4 or 5 of these as they are probably as large as a mandarins digestive tract. He then needs quite a while to digest it to move on to eat something else.
 

DaveK

Well-Known Member
Do a search on white worm cultures and you should find several vendors. A culture is not expensive although you will need to give the culture a chance to get going before you can harvest a lot of them.
 

lbiminiblue

Well-Known Member
Paul another question for you, as you've always seemed to be the mandarin guru. My 120 is close to 4-5 years old, and has no copepod eaters in it right now. I've always toyed with the idea of a dragonet of sorts but hate the idea of not having everything it needs and having a dead one on my hands. I had a starry blenny for a while that just kinda disappeared.

I know for a fact I have a pistol shrimp living in one of my rocks, who doesn't bother the clownfish but makes quick meals out of my clean up crew, and I suspect the blenny fell prey to him but have no way to prove it.

Would you hold off on a dragonet until the shrimp is taken care of?
 

Paul B

Well-Known Member
Pistol shrimps should have no effect on mandarins. I have 2 mandarins and a breeding pair of pistol shrimp. They all have been in my tank for years. No problem so far. Pistol shrimp are scavengers and won't kill your fish. They are also practically blind and can't even read braille. I am not sure if they can hear, or dance.
 
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