Chuckie

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*

No problemo, Mango Thanks!

As Mouse stated above this is fine, but : It may help you to re-read the AusAqua rules if you are still in any doubt about our expectations.

They can view any of the public forums. If they want to post, they will need to join. It's not like it costs anything to join.

Vicki, you're a gem!