Earthworms

[Steve_Warner]

Hi all,
Anyone with experience with these worms.......what should I keep a whole bunch in. I collected about 200 tonight from my walkway due to rains. They are nice sized red ones, not the monster nightcrawlers.........maybe red wigglers? Thanks

Steve

[Carol_Roberts]

Walmart has worm keepers and worm bedding in the fishing section

[Francisco_Borrero]

Hi Steve:
As Carol says, Walmart has useful stuff. I don't use theirs but I have seen it and it is good.
I use plastic containers with drilled holes on the bottom and no lid (the lid I place on the bottom as a catch for any excess liquid). I put a piece of loosely laid heavy plastic on top of the bedding, to maintain humidity and keep light out.
I have been running two worm bins for about 3 years now and I like them a lot. My worms are red wigglers, but I believe your nightcrawlers will do fine as long as you feed the small ones to your fish. I don't believe yours are red wigglers, as they are said not to be able to withstand the winter and don't burrow deep (....actually I don't know where you live, so I don't know what they are). I have never tried culturing the garder worms, but a book I have says they do okay but are not as prolific and Eisenia foetida (red wigglers). I find that my fish (adult wilds) have a hard time eating the very fattest worms (even chopped up) but will chomp happily at smaller ones or pieces of them.
After trying several media, what has worked best for me is a mixture of peat moss (I use spent peat after using it for conditioning my discus replacement water) and shredded newspaper. When I used either material by itself, neither did as well as the mixture. A couple of books suggest using only black and white portions of newspaper (no color pages) as the colors are said to contain substantial amounts of heavy metals.
One has to let the initial culture get going before beginning to harvest, and in my case, I harvest only small worms, rotating among the two bins. I couple of times I have over-harvested enough that I have had to wait 1-2 months before having more available. With my 2 bins, I currently feed wigglers to 20 adult discus maybe once a week, sometimes a little more. I HTH. Cheers and good luck. Francisco.

[DISCOMEXICO]

Big favor, I live in mexico city, could you please post pictures of theese worms, and can I feed them to my discus out of the soil or do they have to be treated previously?

[jim_shedden]

Steve : I use earthworms alot. I just go to the bait store and buy a bag of worm bedding. Its cheap and lasts a very long time. After about a month I usually add some potting soil..............just make sure its the kind with no chemicals. I usually take a couple dozen and put them in a styrofoam container with some of the bedding and put them in the fridge. I have had some in the fridge since September and thats a fact. If they are kept cold they will last and last. earthworms are my #1 food.

Jim

[Surfghost63]

Hi Guys,

Hey Alex, glad to see you around here (finally !) :P

You can pick those earthworms in some garden or park near you, but just try a little amount fist, just wash them with tap water, and rinse throughly.

I hope you post often ;)

Bill :guitarist:

P.S. Don't forget to add our flag to your profile, I guess that we are only three Mexican here :-\

[Surfghost63]

:drummer: :thumbsup:

[flogger426]

i did the earthworm thing for a while - but for me it became a pain in the *** - just another thing to worry about and messy. my fish weren't particularly crazy about them either.

i ordered a starter culture form one of those worm places on the internet - i forget the name, but they also raised rabbits.

when i recieved the worms they were in soggy newspaper. i put them in their box and let them go at it down my basement.

two weeks later i broke out with a bad case of ringworm - it sucked! was ripping my skin off.

the doctor said that i probably contracted the fungus from the newspaper that was being used as rabbit bedding.

the next day i dumped the whole box in the garden. that year i had one of the best tomato harvests of all-time!


fwiw, flogger

[April]

hmmmm. ok...best to get red wigglers that are the true compposting worms and only fed on kitchen vegetable scraps. as rabbit manure could carry parasites etc?
but yes.agree with a bit of a pain. as far as even collecting them and feeding them. ok if just a few fish and you have time to sit and hand pick them and feed them.but time consuming . and it does take them a bit to get used to them.

[flogger426]

april,

let me clarify - the red wriggler worm culture that i purchased on-line were not fed rabbit manure! the place that i purchased them from happened to also raise rabbits. it was a rabbit / worm farm.

when they shipped them to me in the soggy newspaper there was rabbit fur in the newspaper. i took note of this when i saw the doctor and he concluded that i contracted the ring worm from the bedding (i have no doubts about this) that was being used in the worm culture.

the soggy newspaper was the perfect medium for the fungus to grow on! ringworm is not a parasite, but a fungus. pretty gross hah!

when you order your culture make sure they don't raise rabbits too! LOL.

your absolutely right! if you have a few fish then the earthworms are practical. alot of fish and it becomes a pain.

i hated chopping them up! one trick is to freeze the worms before feeding - it makes it easier to chop and a sharp pizza cutter works well.

i never got use to it and my fish really weren't crazy about them. it's not the same as dropping blackworms or tubifex worms in the tank. with those things they go absolutely nuts!


flogger

I would be willing to bet money that if they were raising rabbits they were feeding the rabbit manure to the composting worms....that's the whole point....rabbit manure doesn't give off heat(the worms don't do well living in higher temps) as a bi-product of it's decomposition(like many other animal manures) so it's perfect for raising composting worms...that's why coincidentally many rabbit farms also raise composting worms and vise-versa...i would think that many of the red wrigglers that you buy at bait shops and in stores were raised in this manner...

[DarkDiscus]

Flogger,

I have to disagree with you on the worms! They are clean and easy to keep and feed. I have two cultures going now in rubbermaids and I grab worms a couple of times a week and the fish enjoy them. I keep them in shredded newspaper and dig out the smaller worms, so no chopping for adult fish.

My only problem was that I added a bit too much water and the worms made a mass escape attempt. Gotta keep them moist but not too wet.

If I had more fish, I would just have more cultures going. I am, in fact, planning on starting up some more this spring prior to getting 6 new fish from Al.

John

[flogger426]

darkdiscus,

yeah many people love them - not for me though! just like i hate blackworms - lol!

seriously they are a great food for the discus - the cultures for me were just a hassle. i just don'y have time for it. ask me about whiteworms though!

david,

you might be right about the manure. whatever it was i had ringworm all over the place - you guessed it - there too! it really sucked. to make things worse i waited about a week before i saw the doctor - i thought it was dry skin at first.


flogger

[jim_shedden]

flogger : I have tried white worms but have not been very successful. How have you been rearing them and how do you get them out when you want to feed them?

Jim