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Re: Tubifex
>On Oahu a farm is raising tubifex commercially. It appears they have a
>system that allows a constant flow of water into dish pans (or similar
>containers) containing a substrate + a colony of worms. I have been told
>that the farm appears to be using some sort of animal manure (cattle,
>chicken, etc) to feed the worms. Looks like they are making money as all
>the breeders are bitching evey time that the production slows down due to
>expanding the farms, splitting the cultures and needing to wait about 1
>months before producting gets back to normal. Apparently they got their
>products certified by out local aquatic vet as being free of pathogenic
>bacteria (Mycobacterium, etc.)
>
Interesting. Balckworms are certainly farmed. My understanding is that they
are fed on waste produce - lettuce, cabbage etc. They are grown either in
trout farm waste water ponds or in ponds decicated to the blackworm
cultivation. I prefer to get the latter to avoid the possibility of disease
transmission from the trout to the aquarium fish.
Tubifex will certainly thrive in ponds with lots of manure. I used to
harvest pounds of them from a pond in my area that was used for run off
from a poultry raising facility. If any of you live near such facilities
you may want to ask whether you can check their run off ponds. If they
don't have worms, seed them with a starter culture.
It is a pain in the butt to separate them from the mud, though.
Barry
__________________________________________________________________
Barry Cooper, Chair email: bjc3 at cornell_edu
Department of Biomedical Sciences Voice: (607)253-3336
(Pathology) FAX: (607)253-3317
College of Veterinary Medicine
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853
__________________________________________________________________
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