Romifex

[syed.ali]

now the observation:- I have noticed that whenever I put the powdered food on in the water it spreads (because of surface tension) if this does not happen I know that the culture will crash.

Interesting observation indeed...

thats interesting, but i have single culture going for more than 3 months, no crashing.

[deepesh]

Some ammonia related compounds and probably ammonia itself might lower surface tension. Just speculating since quarternary ammonium compounds are good surfactants although it in no way means that these are being formed in the worm cultures.

I must take my hat off to Vishaal given his unique powers of observation!

[VishaalDalal]

now the observation:- I have noticed that whenever I put the powdered food on in the water it spreads (because of surface tension) if this does not happen I know that the culture will crash.

Interesting observation indeed...

thats interesting, but i have single culture going for more than 3 months, no crashing.

I know that Syed and am going to experiment with hair algae next, only would like to know how does the algae survive in darkness (unless you have your culture in a well lighted place.)

[Romi]

This type of worm farm maintains the correct balance between moisture levels in the ambient air and need for ventilation. It allows you to open each drawer, use 60 ml plastic syringe minus needle to suck the water out and replace with fresh, or to suck the worms out with syringe for feeding to your fish.

The syringe should be shaken to separate the worms and make them swim and be active. once added to your aquarium, these worms will start to swim away with a corkscrew motion. This will excite your fish, and give them healthy exercise too, perhaps.

Both I and Vijendra have these boxes, and each was 150 rupees only.

[Romi]

Friends might wonder wherefore the need to post this pic as well. But 3 years of discussing with strangers about how i keep live food, and their inevitable doubts and bewilderment, reminded me that 'a picture is worth a thousand words'.... I am hoping it will save both their and my time henceforth

[ishaan]

An update

DSC01980.JPG

[shergill00]

Romi i would like to know the basics behind using this box. I don't even have to buy it as it is lying unused at home but really interested to know how using this drawer against the normal box would give me advantage over normal box i am currently using.BTW i am using syringe for feeding to fish and changing water right from day one.

Also if you can pm me your phone number. Would like to speak to you on this

[prajjwal]

An update

DSC01980.JPG

Now thats really doing nice..... keep changing water and don't let them in overgrown condition for a long... harvest them


I have a question, does anyone tried to put an airston with little deeper container? will it help?


One more observation I found... put some snail in the culture (idea from Tirtha da) to clean food leftovers... but, new thing I noticed, if you find that snails are trying to climbing outside the water, time to change the water

[deepesh]

I will vouch for harvesting often having lost my culture to being greedy and attempting to raise a bumper crop. Compred to a large culture I now believe multiple small to medium cultures are better.

The worms themselves would crawl up the sides of the container when it was time for a water change. As for snails, one or two at the surface is ok as the common aquatic snails breathe air and come regularly to the surface like whales, however a mass migration of snails to the surface means trouble.

I don't know if Romi has figured out a reason why the drawer boxes seem to produce more, just his experience I think. Romi?

I didn't go for the drawer boxes because they take vertical space and when needed I could just push the individual boxes under the box bed which you can't do with drawer boxes. Comes handy when you are surreptiously multiplying your cultures and some guest asks what's that smell. And then you can say "smell? What smell? I don't see anything smelly!"

[Romi]

Romi i would like to know the basics behind using this box. I don't even have to buy it as it is lying unused at home but really interested to know how using this drawer against the normal box would give me advantage over normal box i am currently using.BTW i am using syringe for feeding to fish and changing water right from day one.

Also if you can pm me your phone number. Would like to speak to you on this

As my buddy Deepesh says, I cannot lay claim to well-researched scientific data to back up my discovery that drawer boxes make for better worm farms. All i can claim is fruitful trial-and-error But if you read my post carefully, Shergill, you will see that my basic idea is that we need a BALANCE between VENTILATION (in single layer boxes obtained by making holes in the box lid) and AIR MOISTURE (the worms like this, this is obtained by not making too many holes, and keeping the air laden with vapour from the water in the container).

That's it.

I can give you my number, no problem, but no worm phone talk for me nowadays. i want people to follow my instructions and keep worms my way. Then when they have worms, they can do their own thing, in a spare culture, discover more facts about keeping them more conveniently and enrich the hobby of fish keeping, especially native fish keeping. i do not want them to debate my methods and drive me up the wall, and then simply say later they lost interest in live food, and be done with it. It's happened. If you are a member of www.indianaquairumhobbyist.com, you can read this thread mentored by me there.

http://indianaquariumhobbyist.com/commu ... c&p=331321

A lot of pages, a lot of info, if u read it all, I will be your fan