LIVE FOODS; Lumbricucus sp ‘chungming’

In the hazy, crazy days of bell-bottoms, Brooke Shields and Saturday Night Fever, looking for live foods such as tubifex worms to feed your fishes was quite a breeze. One just had to look for a drain with soil embankments and work towards finding a mass or patches of red, wriggling worms on a warm day. To collect it, it involved lots of elbow grease, a pair of Wellington boots and rubber gloves (or a willingness to wade in bare footed and hands… aha, I know what you are thinking right now), a pail and the ability to withstand the stench of rotting vegetation and gases that will floor an upper-crust gal within milliseconds. 

Those days, it was a miniature feat to balance the-boy-on-bicycle with one hand on the handlebar and the other clutching the pail and boots (and nose, too). Fish shops would also stock this item and it was a common inventory for fish-shop operators.

It’s different these days. Much of the infrastructures have been upgraded to divert the floods that regularly awash Kuching during the Landas season. Cement embankments are the norm now. These days, natural T. tubifex population(s) is an item extremely difficult to find. I believed that chemical pollution also diminished the population of T. tubifex.

I visited a spot that used to yield aquatic worms which I used to collect when I was a teenage. It is a small patch of sandy ditches that had withstood development and managed to collect a golf-ball size of worms over a period of several days. It could only be done during early morning or late evenings.

I attempted to breed them in 2008 and 2009, using methods described for breeding tubifex and blackworms and all attempts failed. During the beginning of March 2010, I decide to try another time. By now, parameters had been correctly established for conditions needed to breed. This time, the worms started laying creamy colored cocoons which when hatched, appeared as red botches across the surface. Eventually as they grew, they start spreading into a wide maroon-colored patch across the media.

However, my success was short-lived as parasitic invaders in the form of tiny moths started to breed in the troughs they were housed in. Clouds of these moths swamped the troughs and laid masses of eggs that hatched into small creamy larvae and competed with the worms for food. To make matters worse, the creamy-colored larvae developed into black-colored larvae about 10mm long and started to feed on the baby worms and almost decimated the worm population. 

Most of the fishes refused to eat the black larvae. The only fishes that seemed not to mind them were the halfbeaks Hemirhamphodon kuekenthali and freshwater glass prawns Palaemonetes paludosus. So it was a time-consuming task to rip out the troughs, collect any remaining adult and juvenile worms and quarantine them for several days before housing them in new sterilized troughs housed in a different area. All this for a worm. Oh, there is this funky² smell too.

After prolonged, close observations, I have concluded that this worm is neither Tubifex tubifex or Lumbricucus sp. blackworms. Stirring the soil or media and allowing it to settle, T. tubifex will start clumping together into a tight ball of worms on the surface of the media but this worm will not clump together unless the container is bare. L. blackworms thrives in cold water whereas this worm does not like cold water. So I shall nickname this worm Lumbriculus sp. chungming, aka Khoworm after a certain low-life-form-from-Kuching I know of.

There is another type of worm with different behaviors although they look almost the same. This worm was extremely difficult to extract from the media where they were collected from. Once unearthed, each worm will curl into an individual knot and will not clump together unless the container was bare-bottom too so I decided to nickname them Lumbriculus sp knotti.

This worm is of special interest as it seems to be very tough and can survived polluted, anaerobic waters, dried-out media and warm conditions including being under the sun. A trial involves placing a culture in a small bowl with media that receives direct sun during the afternoons and they have survived for more than three weeks without much food and water, wringing their tails after showers fill the bowl. L. sp. knotti  also does not attempt to escape from the container they are housed in whereas L. sp. chungming demands specific water conditions, temperature and other parameters otherwise they (Bless his soul, they are as slippery as he is) will crawl out very fast from the container they are housed in. L. sp. chungming also will not clump into a ball like T. tubifex unless they are housed in a bare container without any media.

My juvenile wild-collected Betta brownorum started losing their shyness once they were fed with chungming and knotti worms and quickly adapted to their new surroundings and grew into healthy adults. I hope to be able to establish a large population of disease, virus-free chungming and knotti worms for my fishes and offer any surpluses to hobbyists who share the same interest as we do.

   

Microworms

MICROWORMS CULTURE

Microworms thought to be Panagrellus redivivus are part of an important live food inventory for fish breeders as it is an important food source for raising tiny fish fries such as wild betta(s). Much have been written on this subject and on our initial trials, found that many of them are not suitable for us as they were written by and for the hobbyist with a small number of tanks.

With more than one hundred and seventy tanks to upkeep, we eventually come to a conclusion that a consistent principle, K.I.S.S. (Keep It Straight and Simple) is good practice as it eliminates waste, unnecessary work and save us time and effort.

After several trials, I use this simple in-house recipe in our breeding facility because the ingredients are available almost any time, anywhere and inexpensive. These are found in most bakery supply shops, supermarkets and the grocery shop.

They are;

1. 200g ordinary bread (high-protein) or plain flour; bread flour give a slight better result in yields. Avoid refined or expired flours.
2. Baker’s yeast or instant yeast (Standard 11g packet).
3. And 100g boiling water.

For your equipment, you may need the following;

Note: All food-contact equipment used for micro-worm production should not be used for human and other pet (cat, dog, bird etc) food production. 

1. A weighing machine (We use a Tanita KD160 digital scale with a tare function. This machine is affordable and importantly, reliable. Newer models have replaced this range)
2. Four clear, clean plastic containers with tight lids. Capacity is 400ml with a wall height of 60mm. A wall too shallow do not contain the nematodes properly when they crawl up the sides
3. New dish-washer sponges
4. A heat-resistant soup dish or bowl
5. A metal dinner spoon
6. Pastry brush
7. Dish of clean water
8. A starter culture
9. A water spray bottle, set to ‘fine mist’

The thumb of measurement is 1:½ meaning for every part of flour, half part of water In Weight, NOT Volume applies. With this ratio, one can use it regardless of either metric or imperial measurement. Example; if you use 160g of flour, add 80g of water. If you use one pound of flour, you add eight ounces of water.

Firstly, make a hole in the middle of the container’s lid. Cut the sponge to a cube size and make side slits to allow the cubes to fit snugly into the hole(s) and they will not slip out. Set aside.

Place the dish or bowl on the weighing machine and press the tare button. It will calibrate the weighting machine by bring the scale reading back to Zero. Weigh out the flour into the dish or bowl. When you are done, continue by pressing the tare button on the weighing machine again to reset it. Make a well in the center of the flour; pour boiling water straight from the stove into the well until it reads 100g. The hot water basically cooks the flour, and breaks down the starches.

Use the metal spoon to mash in the flour to make a stiff dough. Do this while the dough is hot. Once the dough cools down sufficient to be handled, knead the dough by hand until the dough is smooth. It should not stick to the sides of the bowl or your hands or fingers. If it is too sticky, add a little flour. If it is too dry, add a little water until you obtain the right consistency. That’s why I love the digital machine. It takes the guesswork out and delivers consistent results.

Divide the dough into 4 equal parts and form them into ball-shape dough. Flatten the dough into a thin disc to fit neatly into the base of the containers. At this stage, before I place the dough into the container, I will coat them with a wet brush to make the surface moist on both sides. Once the dough is inside the containers, sprinkle the yeast very lightly on the surface. Imagine that you are shaking salt on that favorite ribeye steak you are going to chow on.

Before you introduce your micro-worm culture, ensure that the dough is at 30˚C or room temperature. A lump the size of half a green pea is sufficient. Cover securely with the lid and place in a well-ventilated location that is not exposed to the sun. Make sure the location is free of ants and mites. You also might want to consider the location as it does generate a faint aroma which may be a turn-off to others.

By the second day, you should be able to harvest your first microworms. The surface of the dough should be dry by now. Apply a fine mist of water into the container after you have harvested the worms. The mist should only moisten the surface, not flood it. Several hours, you will be able to harvest another crop of micro-worms, and again, and again for up to six days. The image below shows a culture on its sixth day.

Some writers have expressed that after a week, you can add new food and yeast into the cultures and they can be recycled for a few more times. We find that microworm production is greatly reduced after eight days when the dough breaks down, gets polluted with waste products and have a funky smell. It's really more logical to harvest them all out and start a new batch. Quality matters and your cultures will not crash.