I’ve been raising Grindal worms on poly for many years now, with reasonable (average) success, I am using a cat chow (meow Mix) food for them. My cultures are at approximately 70-74 dgF, and I change their water monthly.
I am wondering what other’s have experienced, I do not get the huge amounts shown in photos from other fish keepers. I am interested in the differences in the poly density, depth of poly, and water used, and the food vs worm production considerations.
Thanks for your input and help!
Jim Langan, AKA Webmaster
I switched entirely to poly a few years ago. I used the green scrubbys sold by Home Depot in packs of 8 I think, usually had 3 of them in a standard cheap home depot shoebox. Water depth about 1/2 inch at most, don’t need to submerge. I used Iams kitten chow (I think – pink bag, was hard to find small bags but Petsmart usually had them, and one lasted quite awhile.) The best part was I could put the bag in a cloth bag (like a pillowcase) which kept the wretched fungus gnats away.
Won’t use dirt or peat or whatever again. Never was short on the grindals.
In a humid moldy environment (NYC apartment!), it worked well though instead of the gnats mold was aproblem so I had to subculture regularly. No big deal – some wet scrubbies and another shoebox with a few holes in it.
Tyrone Genade wrote something I think for a JAKA about it? It was an excellent article.
how thick do you stack the green scrubbers if you have 1/2" of water?
I’ve been doing my grindals in coir, but get the occasional crash and mite problems. Have you found your cultures to be more stable over poly?
jeff
3 scrubbers deep, and I think it was closer to 1cm. of water than 1/2" of water. They lasted much much longer than coir or peat/dirt cultures, months at a time. I also made sure to powder the kitten chow and sprinkle the cultures instead of leaving food lumps around. Used an old paprika jar to sift it out, powdered the food using mortar and pestle or crushed between 2 tablespoons.
Fed every day.
I haven’t done this, but I’ve been told wrapping the cultures in old pillowcases keeps down the mites and fungus. The water can be fed to paramecia cultures, too, they bloom from whatever’s in it.
Thanks, Matt.
I started up a new culture on scrubbies and so far, so good!
Good idea on pulverizing the cat food. I will have to try that out.
jeff
I use actual seat cushion foam for my cultures. It is about 1-1.5 inches thick. When I’m initially starting a culture, I will use some baby oatmeal flakes as a food source. Once the culture starts producing, I switch to trout pellets. I do not crush them. Initially I might put 5 pellets on top of the foam and then cover them with a sheet of flexible plastic sheet used for report covers. (I use the report cover binder to hold tank dividers in place) A culture producing strongly might get 20 pellets every other day.
