PlanetCatfish.com

Hey

Just wondering if anyone tried feeding white worms and daphnia to their canivorous plecos?

Just a thought, since white worms are good food for discus, so why not plecos.

Also with daphnia, they are more nutritious than adult brine shrimp, but would the plecos even stand a chance of catching them?

Thanks

White Worms are readily accepted by Hypancistrus and Peckoltia, fish I have the most experience with.
Daphnia are not accessible to them and I find few fish care much for frozen Daphnia. Frozen Blood Worms are the preferred food compared to Daphnia.

Cool, thanks.

Now I just got to find myself a white worm to start culturing. XD

The best thing to watch any type of loricariidae fish try to hunt and eat brine shrimp... that just makes me LAUGH soo hard.

My suggestion would be for you to atted a meeting of your local aquarium society. Someone will be able to help you out and tell you how they culture them. You will usually get a much larger starter culture this way than mail ordering them. The larger the starter cultures are the more likely they will take off and the sooner you can begin to harvest them. Even if you decide not to go to every meeting joining the club and attending some events will bring you in contact with others in your area with shared interests. Most clubs don't charge much for an annual membership. This will let you participate in auctions and may help you sell any excess fish you raise.
There are many ways to raise White worms and Grindal worms. Many people use a soiless layered foam method in plastic shoe boxes and the traditional ways use wood boxes with peaty, sandy potting soil. This method allows you to raise larger cultures. You place a sheet of glass on the soil and another one that covers the box. The food is placed on the surface and covered with the inner glass. The worms gather around the food and are harvested from balls on the soil and from the inner glass.
While you're at it, also try to find a culture of Grindal Worms. They are a smaller worm but everything loves them. They also are easier to culture under warmer conditions than White worms, like comfortable room temperatures. You use much the same methods to culture them. White worms do best at 64 to 68*F.
Grindal worms are a next step up from bbs for smaller fish. This can be very handy. Fish grow rapidly when regularly fed these worms.

RE: Feeding bbs to Loricarids. If you chill bbs in the refrigerator they fall to the bottom and remain very lethargic long enough for the catfish to eat much more of them.

I had white worm/flat worm in a tank with peppermints and they loved them unfortunately i had to eliminate hydra as both came through tap water. If you can get a pure colony though you'll be in good stead with your fish and cut your food bills dramatically as they just take off in numbers in a well seasoned tank.
Larry that was very good information you gave then. I noted on another thread you have L333's that being the case i shall give you some good information on how to sex them at as little as 2cm tl. The only way i have found that so far has been infallible is to view the ventral fins where the females have a round ventral fin and the males tend to have a pronounced ventral fin ray and a flatter ventral fin(this technique of sexing very small fry is in some not all species 100% accurate with the exception being deformities-knoick on wood lol).
Rohan R

Thanks for the information , especially the culturing procedures. I know a local zebra breeder who cultures them, so I am hoping I can get some from him the next time I get zebras from him.

Rohan Richardson wrote:I had white worm/flat worm in a tank with peppermints and they loved them unfortunately i had to eliminate hydra as both came through tap water. If you can get a pure colony though you'll be in good stead with your fish and cut your food bills dramatically as they just take off in numbers in a well seasoned tank.
Larry that was very good information you gave then. I noted on another thread you have L333's that being the case i shall give you some good information on how to sex them at as little as 2cm tl. The only way i have found that so far has been infallible is to view the ventral fins where the females have a round ventral fin and the males tend to have a pronounced ventral fin ray and a flatter ventral fin(this technique of sexing very small fry is in some not all species 100% accurate with the exception being deformities-knoick on wood lol).
Rohan R

The kind of white worms we are talking about are related to earth worms and can not be cultured in an aquarium.
What you describe sound like planarians worms and most fish don't eat them. They usually occur in overfed tanks.

Interesting method of sexing L333 but since they start breeding at about 3+years, by then sexing by other methods are easier and more useful among a group of breeding age fish.