To All,
As mentioned in last week's "Trick of the Trade", this week's topic concludes the discussion about white worms. This week I'll talk about maintaining your white worm culture once it is established and feeding the critters to your fish.

Sincere thanks to all who responded to the recent "Tricks" posts. Also, I've been notified by Dave Hardy that the posts will be listed on the Discus-l home page for future reference just in case some of the newer members on the list have missed them. Now on with this week's "Trick of the Trade".

As previously stated, it takes about 6-8 weeks for your average white worm culture to mature to the point where you can harvest worms in significant numbers to feed them to your fish. Keep your cultures fresh by changing out 1/4 to 1/3 of the soil every month or so. Now that your culture has matured, it is somewhat difficult to separate the worms from the soil. Most folks do so by taking a clump of worm-filled soil from the culture and placing the clump on a hot plate or oven of some sort and subsequently as the soil heats up and dries, the worms leave the soil for easier collecting.

I've found a much easier way that is clean and simple. I mix bread and milk, mashing the two together to obtain a soggy consistency. I then place clumps of this "feed" on the surface of the culture, being careful not to over feed (It will sour the entire culture!). Several hours after placing the clumps of feed on the surface, the worms will seemingly swarm and gather in great numbers on the "clumps". I then use a blunt pair of tweezers or forceps to pinch a cluster of worms, placing them in baby food jar half filled with clean water. I then gently rinse the worms and feed them to the fish. To feed them to the fish, I use plastic Eye Droppers that I have modified by cutting the pointed ends off, thus enabling the worms to be sucked into the dropper in portions convenient to feed to the fish.

A word about the nutritional value of white worms. They have a high fat content and though there are breeders who feed them daily, I would recommend only feeding them to your fish, at most, twice weekly. They are great for conditioning breeders and contrary to some people's beliefs, they DO NOT carry any parasites that can affect Discus. Just keep your cultures fresh and rinse your worms before feeding and you shouldn't have problems. Remember, keep your cultures fresh, simply change out 1/4 to 1/3 of your soil every month or two. Adding a pinch of baking soda also helps. Good Luck!

Until next week,

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David Eaton
Southeastern Discus
kccfb@ix.netcom.com
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