RE: "Red wigglers" as killie food supplement?

["Marshall E. Ostrow" <mostrow at midsouth_rr.com>]

Bruce,

Would you consider expanding this message, taking some photos and producing
an article on the red wigglers for JAKA. In order to get JAKA on schedule
regularly and close to the beginning of the cover date, I need to build up
an "editorial bank." My goal is to have enough editorial material on hand to
produce a year's worth of journals, then to keep this bank up to that size.
I would like to introduce a little more of the how-to stuff, but not at the
expense of anything else. That may take a few magical flicks of the
editorial wrist, but I think I can do it, with some help from good hobbyists
like you. If you will do it, I would like to have it ASAP. Hope we have the
opportunity to meet in New Jersey.

Marshall Ostrow
Exec. Editor, JAKA

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-killietalk at AKA_Org [mailto:owner-killietalk at AKA_Org]On
Behalf Of Bruce J. Turner
Sent: Thursday, February 13, 2003 11:35 AM
To: killietalk at AKA_Org
Subject: Re: "Red wigglers" as killie food supplement?


I have used red wrigglers (E. foetida) for many years for larger killies
like blue gularis.  They are an easily cultured and very good food.

In the last four or five years, we have used them for feeding of Rivulus
marmoratus two or three times per week (our colony is once again up to
about 1500 animals, most iniindividual containers).  After harvest, we
rinse the worms and chop them into small pieces.  The Rivulus quickly learn
to eat them avidly.  We only feed them two or three times a week because we
keep the animals in small finger bowls with false bottoms (for collecting
eggs) and uneaten food and soil from the worms' guts can be a problem (we
change water once per week in each bowl, completely).  Egg production is
excellent, and the fish do not seem to get tired of them (in contrast,
after a couple of feedings of dried krill or pellet food they  start
ignoring them, and we have to switch off to a different food for a couple
of weeks).  The only problem we have had with the red wrigglers is that
some of my work-study helpers do not like to cut them up---even with
scissors...

We culture the worms in standard polyurethane fish shipping boxes with a
couple of holes drilled in the bottom and blocked with fine screen.  The
culture medium is 2 parts top soil (sifted to remove larger debris---you
would be surprised at the garbage that some brands of top soil contain) to
one part fine sphagnum peat moss, moist but not actually wet.  We feed
exclusively corn meal.  These are probably not optimum culture conditions,
but they nonetheless produce quite adequate amounts of worms and we have
had no incentive to change the recipe (though I suspect that composted cow
manure instead of the peat moss would perhaps work a bit better).  We
maintain 18 such culture boxes and rotate through them, feeding the worms
themselves about once a week on average.

Though we also culture white worms and grindals, I would not be without the
red earthworms.  However, I do not think I would use chopped worms directly
over a peat moss substrate.  I used to breed blue gularis commerically,
with two or three full grown trios per 10 gal tank.  The bottoms were
covered with peat moss (I'm too lazy to collect eggs unless I have to), but
I put some flat ceramic saucers on top of the peat and dropped the worm
pieces (and whole baby worms) right onto the "platter."  The fish quickly
learned to go to the saucers to feed.  Egg production was obscenely
prolific.

****************************************************************************
**

					Bruce J. Turner
					Assoc. Professor of Biology
					VPISU, Blacksburg, VA 24061
					(540)-231-7444
					fishgen at vt_edu


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