I put plastic disks on the culture medium. I put their food under the disks so the worms gather there. A lot stick to the disks. When I want to feed, I dip the disks in a bowl of water and then use a pipette to feed the fishHow do you get the worms off the coir to harvest them? Are they embedded throughout the coir?
Cool! Where did you buy your starter culture?I put plastic disks on the culture medium. I put their food under the disks so the worms gather there. A lot stick to the disks. When I want to feed, I dip the disks in a bowl of water and then use a pipette to feed the fish
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I got it off a dealer on Etsy.Cool! Where did you buy your starter culture?
I think the wingless fruit fly cultures are worse. But it's like you said, the fish love them. They're good for the fish. And I think of live foods as enrichment for the fish. Think about it. The toys people buy for their dogs and cats, those are simulating hunting and killing prey. We can't buy toys for fish. But we can indulge their hunting instincts in the same way with live foods.I bought mine from eBayvery generous amount arrived today
they make me cringe so bad the hairs on the back of my neck stand up
but the fish love them
I've not tried wingless fruit flies...I may need to have a look into thoseI think the wingless fruit fly cultures are worse. But it's like you said, the fish love them. They're good for the fish. And I think of live foods as enrichment for the fish. Think about it. The toys people buy for their dogs and cats, those are simulating hunting and killing prey. We can't buy toys for fish. But we can indulge their hunting instincts in the same way with live foods.
I've not tried wingless fruit flies...I may need to have a look into those
I do like @fish48. I dip the plastic in a separate bowl of water then use a pipette to feed my fish. I usually have worms leftover on the bowl. I just dump them out. Plenty more where that came from.A lot of the soil is sticking to the plastic, so I'm finding it difficult to harvest the worms without feeding dirt to the fish as well...how can I separate the two? Any tips, worm experts?
This worked.I got hit by mites again. A month and a half ago, I started a new culture. Just part of the normal rotation. It got mites.
So here's what I did. First thing was put all the foods I use for the grindals in the freezer overnight. That would kill any mites that got into the food. Then I completely broke that culture down. Then I washed the plastic container, lid and disks in soapy water and then rinsed and dried thoroughly. Made some new coconut coir medium and put it into two containers. Then I got the surviving culture. That one might have mites too. So I took the disk and dipped it in water, just like I do at feeding time. And I then used a pipette to suck out the worms and squirt them into the new cultures. If there were any mites, they would have floated.
So far so good. Looks like the new cultures are coming right along.