RE: White worm culture

[Tish KB <tishykb at yahoo_com>]

Well that pisses me off a little bit. Let me ask tho,
if is possible to have clean cultures w/out these
bugs? Say, if i'd bought a culture off of someone else
it wouldn't have the mites? Cuz if so, i'm going to
leave some negative feedback for this guy, so that
people know he sells dirty cultures (i'll email him
back telling him i'm mad first..).. Here's the email
he replied to me when i sent him a similiar message
asking about the bugs--

"Boy I wish I could get rid of those bugs.  Funny
thing about bugs they come with buddies but everyone
is afraid of the bugs they don't know about.  
The little fruit flies could be just that or it could
be springtails(?).  There is also a little mite like
thing that seems to have gotten in my cultures.  I
haven't had any problems with them so far." 

Is it possible to just leave them in the culture, or
is it something i should really be concerned about?
Can they get out and infest other things? Should i
throw away the substrate the worms are in right now
and start with a fresh stuff? Sorry about all the
questions, but this is the first experience i've had
with growing live worms... and of course i buy an
infested culture.. Thank you so much.
--Tricia in PA 
(and i got my packet of AKA stuff today, yay!)



--- "Stoecker,Michael,FRANKLIN PARK,NC&C"
<michael.stoecker at us_nestle.com> wrote:
> Tricia,
> My guess is that you now have a culture contaminated
> with brown mites. They
> will only get worse. 
> Scoop out the area in the culture where you
> introduced the worms to.  Rinse
> the worms under running water several times until
> you separate out the worms
> from the substrate.  You should only have the worms
> left in the bottom of
> the bowl.  Then re-introduce the  worms back into a
> clean, new culture.
> Start feeding the worms with very small amounts of
> food in the beginning.
> Cover the worms with plastic or glass and keep a lid
> on the whole container.
> I never introduce culture substrates or aquarium
> water from any source into
> my fish room.  Separate out the organisms or fish
> when introducing into your
> environment.
> Hope this helps.
> mike
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tish KB [mailto:tishykb at yahoo_com]
> Sent: Thursday, October 31, 2002 11:33 PM
> To: killietalk at aka_org
> Subject: RE: White worm culture
> 
> 
> 
> > went well over 70 degrees. I know that the mites
> > seemed to like it warm. ;^)
> > 
> 
> Ok well my culture is here, right now i just have a
> small box (about half a foot square) with an inch or
> so of moist peat w/ some baking soda to reduce
> acidity, and dumped the culture on top... It was
> packaged in a stryofoam cup with newspaper on top,
> taped over except for a little air hole. Upon
> knocking
> the dirt or whatever substrate the worms were in
> into
> my peat moss, i noticed a lot of little bugs in
> there.
> They look like teeny beetles, about 1/16th of an
> inch
> big and brown in color... What are these? should i
> worry about them? What about my setup-- will it be
> OK
> or should i add some type of soil to it? should i
> mix
> the culture dirt into the peat or just let it on
> top?
> I have the box top (hinge style) closed for now,
> should i poke a few holes in the top? thanks guy for
> all your help, happy halloween too :)
> --Tricia
> 
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