Culturing your own live foods.....

Below you will find concise methods on how to culture some of the more common livefoods available to the aquarist (there are many more and I will add to this list) I have had so many requests for livefood starter cultures of late and due to family pressures I am no longer posting any out (but may do again in the future). So these are my factsheets I have been sending with the starter cultures. They are my methods, based on experience. Some aquarists may do it differently and get similar or better results but I feel they form a basis on which to start.

Culturing Vinegar eel

Temp
Cultures are best kept warm [room temperature] and in the dark or covered.

Breeding
You will need a container such as a half gallon pickle jar or a one gallon demi-john, cider vinegar, and a few cubes of peeled apple any type. You can cut your vinegar with water, half water and half vinegar maximum. Pop in your apple cubes, a handful will do a gallon. Then add half water to your culture and cover. I use a coffee filter paper held in place by a rubber band. This allows air in and keeps flies out. Leave this for about 24 hours to allow the bacteria to get established then add the remainder of your starter.
After about a month a glass or cup of your medium, siphoned off near the top of your culture should be cloudy with wriggling eels.

Harvesting

Method 1:
Pour the medium siphoned off your culture through coffee filter paper. Keep the vinegar; return this to your culture. Now rinse the eels trapped in your filter by running some fresh water through this. Finally invert into a glass of clean water. Leave them in the water to purge them before feeding.

Method 2:
Siphon off some of your culture from near the top into a long necked bottle [i.e. a wine bottle]. Fill the bottle until the vinegar just starts to enter the neck of the bottle. Then take a small amount of filter wool to form a plug. Push this down until it sits on the vinegar, leaving most off the neck empty. Fill it up with fresh water. The eels will crawl through the filter floss into the fresh water. They can then be harvested with an eye-dropper or turkey baster, and fed to your fry.

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Culturing Microworm

Temp
The optimum temperature for reproduction is 24° - 27° ©. They will stand a little cooler but will not reproduce as fast. The hotter the culture the quicker they will breed and the quicker the culture will go bad.

Breeding
For breeding you will need the following:
• A Container; I use plastic containers with snap on lids. The surface area is more important than the depth. Punch a few small holes in the lid so the culture can breathe.
• Food; I use a smooth oat cereal, made up to a consistency of thick cream. The container should be filled to a depth of about ¼ of an inch.
When the original culture medium has become runny and is still a cream colour, get one or more plastic containers and mix up some food. Place this in the new containers, then take a teaspoon and scrape about a teaspoon of liquid off the surface of your original starter culture. Pour this on top of the food in the container (approx one teaspoon per square inch of culture container, depending on the temperature).
These cultures will eventually begin to have a grayish appearance; this is the time to renew them. I renew one and discard one so that I have a constant amount of cultures at any one time. You will learn with experience the time interval between restarts. Though the colour is a good indicator, they also start to give off an acid smell when they are coming to the end of their useful life.

Harvesting
As the culture multiplies the worms will start to climb the sides of the container. You can use a small damp paintbrush to brush round the sides of the container and directly into the fish tank containing your fry. NOTE: Do not place the brush into the medium as this can pollute the water and kill the fry.

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Culturing Grindalworm

Temp
72° - 84° (F) is ideal; 74° - 84° (F) is the optimum

Breeding
For breeding you will need the following:
• A Container; e.g. an ice-cream tub or similar with holes punched in the lid.
• Media (Potting Compost); I use Irish Moss peat with a little garden lime added, as worms do not like acid soil.
• Food; I use a smooth oat cereal, made up to a consistency of thick cream.
Place your compost in your container to about one inch deep. Spray this until it is nice and damp, but not soaking wet. Place your starter in a depression in the centre of the container. Gently level this and add 1/2 a teaspoon of food to begin with. Gradually add a little more food as the culture uses more and begins to grow. Spread this further out in small round blobs over the media. Take care not to overfeed!!
Your culture should be ready to harvest in about two weeks.

Harvesting
Wet a piece of glass or plastic, sprinkle this with a little food (oat cereal can be used but I use crushed up fish food .. Place this on the media, food face down. Prop one end on a bottle cap or lean it against the side of the container. Next day the worms can be simply rinsed off the side of the glass. Gently rake the culture before feeding.
The worms can be harvested daily. If production starts to tail off just start another culture using a drop of your media.

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Culturing Whiteworm

Temp
The optimum temperature for reproduction is 15° - 21° ©. Below 9° the worms will stop breeding and above 27° they will die.

Breeding
For breeding you will need the following:
• A Container; e.g. an ice-cream tub or similar with holes punched in the lid.
• Medium Potting Compost; I make my own with a little garden lime added, as worms do not like acid soil.
• Food; I use white or brown bread cut into 1†squares and soaked in milk
Place your compost in your container to about three inches deep and gently firm. Spray this until it is nice and damp, but not soaking wet. Empty your starter into a depression in the centre of the container. Gently level this and add a square of bread to begin with. Cover this with a piece of glass or slate (the later works best). Cover the box as white worm’s don’t like light.
The worms will begin to slowly disperse into your culture box. To begin with the worms will eat very little and you may find that the food will grow a white hairy fungus. If this is the case carefully remove the uneaten food, taking care not to remove the worms that are attached to the base of the rotting food. Replace with fresh food. Check the culture every day to ensure that they have enough food. You will find that as the worms multiply, the food will be consumed more quickly.
You can increase the number of cultures by adding some worm filled media from your new culture once it is established (as you did to start your first culture), or upsize to a larger container.
Your culture should be ready to harvest in about 8 - 12 weeks.

Harvesting
A common fault is that people attempt to harvest too early. It usually takes at least 8 weeks for the worms to be collected in numbers large enough to both feed fish and sustain the culture.
To collect the white worm place them in a plastic tub containing a small amount of water for around 5 minutes (this is long enough for the worms to purge themselves of any compost), by this time they will have collected together in small balls and are easy to collect and feed to fish.

I hope this small collection of easy to culture livefoods helps some folk to give it a go.

 

:bawling:

Where can I find some of these cultures now?

Thanks for the info though,saved it for when I get hold of a culture.

Regards
Rob

 

Very interesting and informative thank you