Chuckie

Vegemite! I'd experiment by using different formulas (formulae if you are a spelling nazi ) for each culture and see whick one does best.

not sure if Peter was employing a double entendre back there ... so I won't yellow card him for it just this once!

Abbey tried with green food colouring once, but they never went very green. I think she wasn't game to add too much dye in case it was toxic. what would really be fun if you could feed radioactive worms that glow in the dark. it's all fun til someone is born with a second head, of course...

I thought they just ate the media. I hadn't heard anything about bacteria before. I think they must eat the media as the ones in the tetra bits definitely have a red tinge.

mine usually crash after I get a billion gazillion worms swarming up the sides. they seem to hit critical mass and the whole lot (almost) dies off. Once you start to get more worms than you need/would feed in one hit, I'd split it in two. I have 3 cultures going in the fishroom atm but I'm about to subdivide 2 of the 3 just to be on the safe side. Plus I am between new spawns atm so a bit of downtime on 2 of the cultures won't matter. I agree with Peter re there being no harm in having back ups, but I am guessing your mum might have an issue with the cultures multiplying in her fridge! I suggest that you experiment with different media also. ATM I have 1 made of only weetbix, one made primarily of Tetra Bits (a big canister left over from when I sold my severums) and one with a hefty dose of spirulina fry food powder added. All 3 are rip-snorters. I think I will try one with bread and one with bread + vegemite and see what happens. I may even add some cat food kibble to some!

I don't use oats. I don't use anti-fungals either, and my cultures are fine and last months (famous last words). You all know I am opposed to unnecessary use of medication anyway.

Pimafix?

LOL!!

yep, sometimes when mine are looking a bit flat I add yeast and BANG! (originally types "I add yeats" - imagine that, MWs into poetry... instead of WB Yeats, MW Yeats!)

I don't believe we do. I rarely add yeast to mine, actually, and it still thrives. I recommended the yeast as it is the standard thing to do but frequently I just forget that step!

don't call Inca that! :D

One thing to beward of is bringing in dragonfly larvae or eggs with your mozzie rafts or larvae. I find a pinch of oats in a bucket of old water works really well. Horse saliva in the water seems to be popular with mozzies too, especially mixed with masticated pollard and lucerne hay, but I realise that's probably not in plentiful supply for everyone and it's pretty gross to boot.

Here are some excellent photos of mozzie rafts - for hunters and collectors

when it smells particularly rancid. All I san say is, when the time comes, you will know!

no don't chuck them, start a new culture from the existing culture.

yeah sorry, I meant lid with no holes.

put the lid on They'll climb just fine then!

Fishless Cycling by the legend, Chris Cow Cycling your aquarium fishless Fishless Cycle/Nitrogen Cycle More on the Nitrogen Cycle - Ammonia, NitrIte and NitrAte

Aw shucks! I have no idea what hasa marina is!!

Harvesting your MW This is my MW harvesting method. Other people use different methods but I figure, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. After the culture is up and running, as you can see from the image above, the worms swarm up the sides of the container. If yours are not swarming but are staying in the mixture, put an airtight lid on overnight and once they start to run out of air, they will climb the sides, making them easier to harvest. I use a damp artists' paintbrush to wipe the worms from the side of the container, and I rinse them into about 10ML of water from the fry tank, in a plastic cup. I then use a pipette/tiny baster/syringe or similar to collect the water, MW and all, and I drip it over the surface of the tank, so that the MW do not all land in one spot or fall into the fry tank in clumps or dollops. Where possible I make sure that I drip it over the java moss/other plants in the tank, so the worms don't all end up on the bottom, and so the fry are not resting on the bottom while feeding, but have to work for it a bit. Good luck with your own culture!

By now a fair bit of the water may have been soaked up by the weet-bix. If you need to, you can add a bit more water, until you have a consistency that looks something like this: Your new culture will need a lid, to keep the flies out - trust me on this!. But the MW also need small holes so they can breathe. If you are going to be opening it every day, then enough air will get in when you open it, so you can use an airtight lid. I prefer to use a lid with air holes, as I don't have spawns at MW-eating stage more often than about once every 2 - 3 months and I need to keep the cultures alive in between spawns. Here is one of mine with the lid in place: This is how your new culture should look from the side after you have completed the steps above: Place it somewhere warm, but not hot! I keep the cultures in the bottom shelf of my fish room, which is the coolest place in a room that is usually about 30*C. After a few days, the view from the side of your new culture should look like this: YUMMY! Look at those little worms!

Next, you need some bakers yeast: Take about a teaspoon of the yeast granules, about this much: and sprinkle it on top of the dampened weet-bix mixture like so: After that you should have about this much yeast on top:

Then I take a tablespoon or so of mixture from an established MW culture. Try to obtain a scoop that gets all layers of the existing culture: Pour the tablespoon of the established culture onto the crushed up weet-bix biscuit in your new culture: Then add enough water to comfortably cover the weet-bix (but don't drown it): After you add the water, the mix will look something like this:

Microworms ("MW") are a great 1st food for small fry. I usually feed them to my betta fry for the 1st 3 days after they are free swimming (after they have absorbed their yolk sac). Here is my method of culturing MW. Before you begin You will need an established MW culture to act as a starter culture, because there is no such thing as spontaneous generation of MW! If you would like a starter culture please post a WTB in the Classifieds and I know that plenty of our members would be very happy to help you out. My method and ingredients I use a plastic takeaway container, like this: As a culturing medium, I use weet-bix. I find this the least smelly of the various media that I have experimented with (including oats, potato whip and bread): I take a single weet-bix biscuit and crumble it up in the base of the take-away container, so it looks like this:

Courtesy of Vicki - shortcut to How do I know if my fish was legally imported? Thanks, Vicki *lol*