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RE: Grindal worm Problem
I'd say they are definately mites. When they appear in my cultures, I can
feel them crawling around the outside of the box when I pick it up. They
are hard, and can be brushed off the plastic easily, unlike stray worms
that are soft or dried on.
I notice them most on new cultures, and I'm beginning to suspect I don't
wet the new media enough. After the culture gets wetter, the mites seem to
disappear (and are replaced by fungus gnats, who seem to like the extra
moisture). You might just try spraying the culture with water, a little at
a time until they back off.
A few times I've had a significant number of the mites end up in the tanks
and the top feeding fish seem to like them just fine.
By the way, I feed my Grindals Trout Chow (really gamefish pellets, but the
store still calls it trout chow) with great success. I sometimes grind it
up and sprinkle it on the surface, sometimes I just put whole pellets in.
The whole pellets result in a major accumulation of worms that I can scrape
off the surface. When I feed the powdered form, the whole culture explodes
with worms and I just wipe them off the side or the piece of acrylic I lay
on the surface.
Grindals are fun to culture when they're doing well. I used to wonder about
the overfeeding cautions about white worms and figured no one could raise
that many worms to cause a problem, but some days, my fish have been so
gorged on Grindals that they just watch the extra writhe on the bottom for
a while. That's a stuffed killie! I usually take that as a sign to back
off on the trout chow a little and feed the fish some prepared food the
next day to balance things out.
Dennis
> Hello all, I have a problem with my grindal worms... There are very small
> bugs crawling around inside the container. I assume they are mites. My
> question is what do mites look like? and If they are mite what do I need to
> do to save the culture? There are still lots of worms in the shoe box. The
> bugs are about the size of a period written with a pencil. They seem to be
> kind of an orangish brown color, and crawl all over inside the container. I
> have not seen any juming or flying.
> Any Ideas to combat these little guys would be great.... I have a feeling
> they are going to wreak havoc on the culture if I don't do somthing soon.
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