# Microworms etc, medium. and enriching?



## df001 (Nov 13, 2007)

I'm curious what medium recipes people use for their microworms etc.

I've also of late been reading up a lot about enriching via spirulina powder or carrot juice and wondering if anyone has any experience with either?


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## Fishfur (Mar 4, 2012)

I know I've always used mushy oatmeal for a substrate. I've used both 'quick' oats and also finely ground steel cut oats, that I grind up in the coffee mill. Usually mix with hot water to start, allow to cool and then adjust the consistency with plain water. I learned the hard way never to add yeast to the oats before mixing, you get quite a bubbly mess that way.

I've always fed yeast, usually baker's yeast. Though I have experimented with dried brewers yeast as well, because it is much cheaper. It is hard to say how that went, because not long after I began to use brewers yeast, they turned on the heat and it's been hell hot here since. The heat killed off most of my cultures from early in the year, so I'm going to have to start over and keep them in a cooler room from now on. The shelf they were on is smack in front of the radiators, which I can't see behind the shelves and didn't even think of when I started keeping the cultures there in the spring.

Never heard of feeding spirulina or carrot juice, though it sounds interesting and I'd like to read more about that. Carrots have plenty of beta carotenes, which should be good for fish colour enhancement. Spirulina not only has carotenes in abundance, but proteins and a ton of other stuff. I've fed spirulina to Ghost & Whisker shrimp and had their shells turn a nice orangey colour. Might have been the algae, might also have been simple maturity, since I'd never kept either species before and don't have a shrimp handy to compare with that was fed something else instead.

But it's very expensive to buy genuine spirulina powder. Spirulina flake isn't all spirulina, unfortunately, having other ingredients in it to make it flakes. Yeast is, itself, quite nutritious. Be interesting to see an analysis of nutrient content of all three to compare what each has to offer. I seem to recall yeast is heavy in the B vitamins, for one thing.

Did you read about how to feed carrot juice ? Unless used in very tiny amounts, would it not tend to make the substrate too wet ? Though it needs to be moist, it's not good for it to be sopping wet. Striking a balance between too wet and too dry can be a bit of a pain sometimes, I find.

Of course the combo of oats and yeast quickly becomes very sour. I've read it is the growing acidity of the media that causes the worms to climb the sides of the container. One good thing about the acidity is that it appears to discourage mould growth on the media. Mould might be much happier to grow on carrot juice. Just try keeping a carrot alive in water at room temperature for a few days. It'll soon melt into a foul mess. [ wanted to get the greens growing out of the carrot top, but it didn't work]

I've also tried freezing them in small quantities to feed later, but you need big cultures to get enough to do that. Used one of those punch out pill packs with tiny allergy pills for 'wells' to freeze them in one serving sizes, more or less, wrapped in foil to freeze. Have not yet fed the few I froze, but see no reason it wouldn't work.

I'm going to look up feeding spirulina and carrot juice and see if I can find anything about them though, it can't be a bad thing to 'gut load' fish food, surely ?

I have one tip to offer. Make the holes for air in the lid of the culture container tiny, to keep out invaders such as fruit flies. I use the end of a dressmaker's pin, the kind that has a glass ball on the end, but a safety pin or sewing needle would do as well. I put the lid on a cutting board and just press the sharp tip through. Make lots of them because they are tiny and it worked quite well.

Holes that small won't let anything in or out but air, whereas holes done with a knife tip, 1/16" drills or hot pokers are plenty large enough that any wandering critter can get in and spoil the culture, and big holes also dry out the media faster. I usually use either bulk food containers or those cheap reusable containers from the store, like Ziploks or Glad.


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## Fishfur (Mar 4, 2012)

I had a look at some of the stuff online about feeding worms. It seems to make sense to feed spirulina to microworms, simply because it's so often a part of other fish foods and we think of it as being very nutritious. But I'm not sure it's really necessary. 

If you're feeding fry, one of the most important nutrients for them is fat, which is true of many new born animals. Yolk sacs are very high in fats. Worms tend to be a bit higher in fats generally, so that's good. For adult fish, too much fat is not as good, so they may not be the best all around diet for adult fish.

So much of what is known about feeding fish comes from aquaculture of food fish, and there seems to be some evidence that even herbivorous fish actually need more than just algae or kelp. Even fish considered to be algae eaters only, probably also eat many other things in their native habitats. 

So feeding a high quality fish food to worms might actually be more beneficial than anything else you might feed them. But it would have to be ground to a fine powder for them to consume it, I'd think, as they are so small.

There is a neat article on how to increase worm numbers.. seems wheat flour will produce not only more worms, but more worms for a much longer period of time before the culture has to be restarted. The addition of yeast or even vegetable oil, like corn oil, also increases worm production, so it's worth feeding them if only for that reason.

I am not sure I'd want to go to the expense of using spirulina to feed worms, but finely powdered fish food might be a good way to go, in terms of gut loading them. I did not see anything on using carrot juice, but even though it's good for us, I doubt it's going to do much for the fish who eat the worms. One article mentioned that high levels of some of the anti oxidants, such as carotenes and especially astaxanthins, is not good for fish, and won't enhance their colours any more than the levels already present in most good quality fish foods do. 
I think my next worm culture may be wheat based and I'll try feeding them not only yeast but see if I can powder some fish food too and give them that as well.


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