How do I save my grindal worm culture?!

**Bybloz** · 17th Apr 2008, 23:59

For 2 months now I've been maintaining 2 grindal worm cultures in 2 separate plastic containers, one with 3 "green scouring pads" as media, and the other with 6 pads. I feed mainly fish-fry food.

Problems:
1) I just couldn't seem to increase the small worm population despite feeding optimally, that is feeding only enough that can be finished in one day.
2) Over the last 2 days, both show obvious signs of crashing, with dwindling population and food left uneaten.

Questions:
1) What can I do to save the culture??
2) What should be the right water level? I'm afraid I'm drowning the worms.

Thanks for advice...
Kai

**RonWill** · 18th Apr 2008, 02:52

Kai,
I'd like to know from where you acquired the grindal starters. It's been a long time since I maintained any cultures and am pleasantly surprised to hear of another local doing so.

You might want to gleam info off the following threads;
Grindal worm cultures - If memory serves correct, this is where starters were distributed.
Grindal culturing with synthetic media - My experience with the 'RJ boxes' is logged here. To view the photo-essay, click here.

December 17th 2003 - Click here for the first update:
RJ's response to what I've done and my subsequent corrections or modificatons.

February 6th 2004 - Click here for 2nd update on the original "RJ-Box", plus other variations.

As for those issues you're experiencing, I'll throw in a few thoughts, actually just three; heat, humidity and oxygen.

Heat
Nothing stunts the growth of life cultures more than our SG weather. Keep your cultures close to the floor, in the dark and somewhere cool. I bet a wine chiller will work wonders.

Humidity
When the top layers of your synthetic media gets too dry, the grindals will retreat into the lower areas. Avoid misting the food but instead, keep the humidity high. Avoid overfeeding since decaying food will pollute and kill your culture.

Oxygen - my observations
When there is insufficient circulation or lack of oxygen, it will drive the worms out of the media. If there's a water bath at the bottom of your worm box, they are all likely to drown.

Wish I could remember more but that's all I can think of for now. Do take the time to read through what RJ wrote. That's the valued information that all my experiments were based on. It's lengthy, I admit, but worth every minute.

Hope you'll do well in propagating the cultures. Do re-sub them often and keep us all updated on your progress.

**Bybloz** · 30th Apr 2008, 17:57

Thanks Ronnie for your advice. But despite my effort to save them, I still lost the culture.

I purchased them from a forumer here 2 months ago.

May I know what's the meaning of "re-sub"?

Anyway, is there anyone out there who has cultures of grindal worm, white worm or even vinegar eels?

**RonWill** · 30th Apr 2008, 20:30

Kai, are you referring to KC's earlier posting? If so, then I doubt if anyone else in this forum still has them.

Locals are not very game in livefood culturing since tubifex and daphnia is still quite easily available. Unlike our USA or European counterparts, store-purchased livefoods is costly and depends largely on season, when it gets too cold to ship.

I no longer have any cultures but to re-sub literally means re-starting new cultures from your existing ones before they crash or go bad.

For microworms, I know that there are members at AQ who has them. As far as I know, one recently had a new clutch of corydorus fry and will be feeding them microworms. Try posting your needs at Petfrd or AQ and see what happens.

**Bybloz** · 1st May 2008, 14:51

Yes, they were from KC. I really liked the grindal worms, as compared to tubifex, they are far cleaner and disease-free. Excellent for intermediate stage of fry growth.

I do have healthy cultures of microworm at hand always.

Kai