splendidbetta

I set a culture up just now. We'll see how it turns out :)

That sounds simple, I think I'll set up a culture using some aquarium water and crushed oats tonight :lol:

I found this: http://aquarimax.com/shop/grindal-worms-2/grindal-worms/ :)

Newly hatched mozzie larvae are almost certainly too large to be a first food for fry. Of course you could try it but I doubt you would have much luck. New fry struggle even with bbs at first, which are much smaller and softer. Be careful with feeding foods that are too large and/or tough - fry jaws can be jammed permanently open and their internal organs probably wouldn't fare well either. For first foods, stick to infusoria, MW, VE and BBS.

:) It's just a platinum blue grizzle HMPK that I had saved on my hard drive, breeder from bettas4all.nl, I think. Photoshopped and cropped to alter color. It matches AAQ too I reckon. I'm really loving Teal at the moment. *lol*

Lol thanks Abbey You've had yours for ages. Means you're easily recognizable in threads For your new avatar, may I suggest an ++ empty cheese dispenser ++ ?

Better now? It's also colour-coded to match the forum *lol*

Is my text too long? :)

There's so many that 3 quarters of the culture IS MW. You could pour most of it all off and it would just be worms and decomposed food and waste (in a sudge, like watered down gruel ) Time for another subby?

I've just read that if you need to have MW ready for harvest within a few (2-3) days, from a brand-new sub culture, use oatmeal. However, very moist bread with yeast will last longer than oatmeal. My medium consists of a mixture of organic instant oats (base/main ingredient), white bread, semolina, Farex Banana-flavour baby dry food/instant porridge, and spirulina powder along with a bit of yeast. ^ Well, that was the original composition of my cultures. Now I've been adding a quarter of a peice of white bread to each culture every week or 2 weeks. I'm getting such a high production rate and I have no fry to feed What should I do? These cultures have been going for the past month or so.

My spawn tank has been set up for a couple weeks or so without fish, but with lots of light, filtration and plants, and it is absolutely swarming with tiny life forms like cyclops, mouse's 'white bbs' and dpahnia My pair will also feast on live bloodworms that are growing in there when I add them ^_^

Ah well, I don't like vegemite (I've been conditioned on Greek cuisine lol) or peanutbutter for that matter But I'll give it a go, it couldn't hurt I mean try it on my worms, not actually eat it myself I've tried that already ;)

I'm not sure I like the idea of feeding them vegemite! I'm also not sure if is that nutritious. After I get a spawn underway I will expeiment more. I still have one big freshly-started culture in the fridge that is in just oats, some bread, and yeast, so if my new mix kills my worms I'll still be safe. I've niticed that a maturing culture smells like vinegar slightly... I assume this is due to fermentation? Peter, I thought MW weren't very nutritious simply because they generally are cultured on such bland medium as flour. But what you say makes complete sense. :yes:

Well, as it stands, I now have 6 whole cultures set up from a starter that PeterJ sent me a couple weeks ago. I have HEAPS! of worms, and I reckon I should take them off the tank so they can stop breeding so fast! I'm experimenting with mediums now; My medium consists of a mixture of organic instant oats (base/main ingredient), white bread, semolina, Farex Banana-flavour baby dry food/instant porridge, and spirulina powder along with a bit of yeast. That should produce some very nutritious worms Any other ideas of what else I could try?

HAHA! Radioactive bettas :lol:

:lol: Thanks for the help everyone.

Thanks a lot for the responses Peter and Lisa. I wish I had known about media depth earlier... it's not that deep but I think it could be shallower I have billions of worms on the surface AND on the sides. I keep the culture near the top of the 'spawn tank'... I have an extra sheet of glass on the tank as a lid, and a good 20cm of it overhangs out the back of the tank, so it is still nice and worm, i mean warm . Thus the fast growth of the culture. I'll get some more plastic containers tonight, I reckon I could split that one culture into 3 at once.. Mum doesn't mind the worms in the fridge. She absolutely cant handle them at all, but she lets me keep sealed live foods and frozen food in there I wanted to show her my running culture the other day, and it had slipped her mind that I had worms in it... I even got her to sniff it once I told her it smelled like a kind of greek bread dough... and then I mentioned worms... it was hilarious If the MW eat the yeast and the bacteria growing on the media, what good would using more nutritious mediums do? Would the bacteria incorporate more nutrients into themselves and thus pass it onto the MW? Or do the MW feed directly of the medium as well?

My culture has taken off and I have started a sub-culture and am keeping that in the fridge. But I've noticed that the worms only live on or just below the surface of the culture. No evidence of worms below that. The medium is organic instant oats, some plain flour and some white bread, along with some yeast. Is this normal? The culture smells like a bread dough. How will I know that it is about to crash?

I thought the yeast helped break down the medium which helped the MW eat it better, and perhaps they feed on the yeast as well?

Does the medium ever go mouldy/fungussy?

...Because they will be trying to get some air... My Grindals used to do that.

But what if they don't have an Ausaqua membership? Can they still view and reply to the topic?