Re: [Killietalk] Tubifex

[Wright Huntley <whuntley at verizon_net>]

Kris Laats wrote:

> Wright, Great post.  How did they gain such a horrible reputation?

The historic poor separation of sewers and water systems in Mexico gives
us colorful diseases like "Montezuma's Revenge" or "Tijuana Two-Step."
Cholera and amoebic diseases are still all too common, but it is way
better than it was. It's a small leap to the conclusion that living
things from that environment carry all those bad diseases. For all I
know, they do. A week of running water seemed to be all they needed to
purge their gut, tho.

> Also, can they be sustainably cultured on a small scale?  I have kept
>  blackworms in the past, but found that they didn't reproduce fast 
> enough to warrant the time and effort I was spending on them.

The same is probably true of tubifex. If you have a mile or two of open
sewage ditch, it might work. ;-)

Since they tolerate crowding and low oxygen, better, I could be quite
wrong on that. Robert Nhan found some, in a tub of his pond Lotus or
water lillies, and started a culture that fed his fishroom but was a bit
labor intensive. IDK why he quit. [Maybe he couldn't talk his mother
into doing it when he was gone. :^)]

He set up 7 10G tanks with sand bottoms and airstones. He stocked the
few worms he had into the tanks and fed them well (on fish flakes, as I
recall). Eventually, he could net a good amount of worms from half of a
tank, each day. At the end of 2 weeks he could start over.

I originally reported that he was doing it with blackworms, but he
spotted it and kindly straightened me out on that. The worms he
described sounded exactly like real tubifex.

Wright

--
Wright Huntley -- 760 872-3995 -- Rt. 001 Box K36, Bishop CA 93514

"If the majority of Americans didn’t receive their educations at the
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fraternity election"  Neal Boortz



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