How to breed white worms for the aquarium

Every successful tropical fish breeder knows that feeding live food to your animals is one of the best ways to keep your fish healthy and active.

Live foods are generally high in protein. They stimulate spawning and help to intensify coloration. Live foods enhance the natural tendencies of fish to forage as they would in their natural environment.

White grubs (Enchytraeus albidus) are a great food source for the aquarium. They are about 70% protein, 14.5% fat, and about 10% carbohydrates. The size of the white worm is about 3/4″ to 1 1/2″, somewhere between Tubifex and Grindal worms. Fish love them and they are suitable for a wide variety of carnivorous fish, even the smallest cichlids.

Nick Lockhart, breeder of King Discus [http://www.kingdiscus.com] feed white worms twice a week to our spawning and juvenile discus. Your goal is to provide a wide variety of foods to keep your fish interested and feed them to stimulate breeding.

White worms are easy to breed. A plastic shoebox from the dollar store will meet the needs of most aquarists. Since worms need to breathe, the container should not be airtight. Cutting a small hole in the lid and placing a piece of breathable foam in the hole will be enough to allow enough oxygen to reach the worms.

Fill the container about 3/4 full with peat as a medium. The peat should be moist, but not soggy. Try squeezing a bit of the medium into your hand. If a few drops come out, then you’re right. If water comes out of the dough in a stream, you have it too wet.

Add your worm starter culture. Finding a suitable starter culture can sometimes be difficult. A good source may be from auctions at local fishing clubs or from a fellow enthusiast. Also, searching the classifieds on the back pages of magazines like Aquarium Fish Magazine or Aquarium USA can sometimes lead to a good resource.

Place a piece of wet, crustless white bread on top of the compost medium. Cover this with a plastic sheet the size of the bread slice. The plastic helps keep the bread from drying out. It’s a good idea to bury the piece of bread in the middle when first starting a culture to prevent mold from forming. Allow the worms to establish a week before feeding them. Check on them daily to make sure they are eating the bread.

White grubs should be kept in a cool, dark place, free of insects. We use an apartment-sized refrigerator with a temperature control sensor that maintains the temperature between 55 and 65 degrees Fahrenheit.

One of the best foods for white worms is Gerber Baby Oatmeal. Add a pinch of active dry yeast to the mixture. The trick is to feed the worms enough to ensure they thrive, but not so much that they start to mold. A good rule of thumb is to only feed what they will consume in three days. A bit of trial and error work is needed here. If mold appears, simply scoop it out of the way and replace the food, using less next time.

White worm cultures will “crash” if the population becomes too large. This can be noticed by worms trying to climb up the sides of the container. Just pour the medium onto a sheet of newspaper, separate it into two parts, and you’ll have another culture to fall back on if the first one fails. Get another shoebox, fill it 3/4 full with moistened peat, and you’re assured of a supply of white grubs.

To collect white worms, simply wait until there are a good clump of them under the plastic sheet, pluck them out with tweezers or your fingers, and clean them properly before feeding your fish. rinsing with non-chlorine water, pouring from one container to another will do the trick, removing any dirt or food debris. You can then feed the worms to your fish.

The most important thing to remember about growing white worms is to never let the medium dry out. It’s also a good idea to have two cultures growing at the same time, in case one of the cultures “collapses.” Watch for mold, feed the worms properly, and you’ll have happy, vigorous fish.