White Worms for mandarins etc.

Paul B

Well-Known Member
I have been feeding new born brine shrimp, blackworms and white worms to my mandarins for many years and they are all excellent foods. My mandarins get live foods as do all my fish every day which I believe is a big key to this hobby for a number of reasons, but I just want to discuss whiteworms for now.

About 5 years ago (I have a horrible memory so it could have been during the Nixon years or last Tuesday) I started a whiteworm culture. It was like $15.00 (remember the thing about my memory) and you get a bunch of worms in a little dirt.

I put them in a plastic shoebox with some bread and kept it wet and after a couple of weeks you have thousands of worms, maybe millions but I am still counting.
The absolute best thing about live white worms is that they stay alive in salt water like at least two days. When you feed live blackworms, as soon as they hit the water, they do this little macarana dance and croak before they hit the bottom so slow eaters like mandarins eat a couple then go and take a nap while the rest of the worms are eaten by crabs, snails, manatees or whatever you are using as a CUC.

White worms are also "Free". Well, after you buy a culture anyway. Every week or two, (6 months if I forget about them as I sometimes do) I put half a slice of frozen multi grain bread in the container with some full fatted yogurt and a little nutritional yeast on it. I then spray some plain water on, RO/DI if you are a compulsive nervous wreck, and put the thing in the dark.

When I open it it is full of worms just dancing and singing all over the place. Thousands of babies also.

When you get too many, they clump up on the sides of the container where you can put your girlfriends finger in there to scoop them up. Most girlfriends love that as my wife would. :eek:

But if you don't have enough for that, I take out a clump of worms and dirt and put it in a container. Run some tap water through it a few times and pour off the fine dirt leaving big particles of dirt and worms. Leave it along for a few minutes, maybe go and watch Oprah give away Cadillacs, to homeless cats. The worms clump together so you can suck them out with a straw. I use a baster thing.
Then take the rest of that dirt and strain it in a net and dump it back in the worm container.

Squirt the worms in your tank, especially where your mandarin is and he can feast for days. Mandarins can't eat too much at one meal, especially if it's lent.
It's a great and healthy food that lasts for days. The worms won't dig in your sand and get lost because, well, I don't know exactly, they just don't.

Here is my mandarin eating white worms in his little diner. I built this to keep the copperband away and he hates me for it.

 
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DaveK

Well-Known Member
White worms are a great food for just about all fish. They have been know in the hobby for years. Nowadays it can be a little hard to find someone selling cultures of them.

As a side note - Quite a few times on FW forums I see people posting about what food is best, and almost all the recommendations are for various forms of flake or pellet dry food. These foods have their place, but don't begin to compare to using live foods such as white worms.
 

Uncle99

Well-Known Member
What a great article Paul B I have been feeding my Mandarin the brine nauplii for a couple of months now, but sounds like an experiment to the worms sounds interesting....
 

Pat24601

Well-Known Member
What I love about this post is it is very detailed about how one maintains a supply of white worms. For a long time, I knew you were feeding white worms, but I had no idea how. I don't exactly have a white worm store I can go to.
 

Paul B

Well-Known Member
Uncle, the brine suppliments the worms as both are great foods.

Pat, there are white worm stores everywhere there is a computer. :biggrin:
 

Uncle99

Well-Known Member
Thanks so much, all this helps keep my little difficult feeder happy!
Always appreciated, this site is simply the best in helpful information.
 

Paul B

Well-Known Member
Eventually the shoebox may get filled with these very tiny white mites, especially if you forgot to take your shoes out of the box. They are easy to remove because the cool thing about mites is they have this waxy coating so they can't sink. (Thats why you never see them while SCUBA diving) The worms sink. Every few months, if there are too many mites, I flood their container. The mites all float and I pour off the surface. Keep doing that maybe 4 or 5 times until you see no more mites, then put the muddy water and worms in a net. Let it drain for a couple of minutes and put it back in the shoe box. They like it very wet anyway just be sure there is no puddle in the bottom.
I also stir up the worms every time I use them. I try not to use the same spoon I will eat breakfast with but if you use your girlfriends spoon she will never know because the worms don't actually taste that bad.
Don't worry, the mites and worms will not climb out of the shoebox, (unless you left your shoes in it) they need to stay wet. I also tried to feed the mites to my fish, but they don't seem to like them. I myself never tasted them.
I use a organic potting soil that has some vermiculite in it but no fertilizer. The vermiculite floats so that comes out with the mites. You can see some of it here in the container after I poured off the water a few times.

 

Paul B

Well-Known Member
The whiteworms seem to live for about 5 days in salt water, just squirt them around the tank and the fish, shrimp and crabs can take their time looking for them.
If anyone lives near me I will give you a starter culture for free. Just don't get crazy, I am not giving away Grand marnier or anything like that. :rolleyes:
 

SMangels

New Member
Ya I am able to keep them where I work. Constantly battling mites but those are a fairly easy fix. Flood with RO water and pour off excess. Any garage area would work for storage, they are amazingly hardy, as shown by their ability to survive saltwater for several hours.
 
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