by Alden Smith

A plastic shoebox from the dollar store will meet the needs of most aquarists. As worms need to breathe, the container shouldn’t be air tight. Cutting a small hole in the lid and placing a piece of breathable foam in the hole will suffice to allow enough oxygen to reach the worms.

Fill the container about 3/4 full with peat moss as the medium. The peat moss should be wet, but not soaked. Test by squeezing a bit of the medium in your hand. If a few drops emerge, then you have it right. If water emerges from the mass in a stream, you have it too wet.

Add your starter culture of worms. Finding a suitable starter culture can at times be difficult. A good source can be from auctions at local fish clubs, or from a fellow enthusiast. Also, looking in the classified in the back pages of magazines like Aquarium Fish Magazine or Aquarium USA can sometimes lead to a good resource.

Place a piece of wet crustless white bread on top of the medium for compost. Cover this with a sheet of plastic the size of the slice of bread. The plastic aids in keeping the bread from drying out. It is a good idea to bury the piece of bread in the medium when first starting a culture to prevent mold from occurring.

Allow the worms a week to establish before feeding them. Check on them on a daily basis to insure that they are eating the bread.White worms will need to be housed in a cool dark place, free from insects. We use an apartment sized refrigerator with a temperature control sensor that maintains the temperature at 55-65 degrees Fahrenheit.

One of the best foods for white worms is Gerber’s Baby Oatmeal. Add a pinch of active dry yeast to the mixture. The trick is to feed the worms enough to insure they thrive, but not so much that it will begin to mold. A good rule of thumb is to feed only what they will consume in three days. A little trial and error work is needed here. If mold occurs, simply spoon it out of the medium, and replace the food, using less the next time.

White worm cultures will "crash" if the population becomes too large. This can be noted by the worms attempting to crawl up the sides of the container. Simply dump the medium onto a sheet of newspaper, separate the medium into two parts, and you have another culture to fall back on if the first crashes. Get another shoebox, top to 3/4 full with dampened peat moss, and you have the insurance of a supply of white worms.

To harvest white worms, simply wait until a nice clump of them are underneath the sheet of plastic, pluck them out with tweezers or your fingers, and clean appropriately before feeding to your fish. rinsing with dechlorinated water, by pouring from one container to another will do the trick, removing any soil or left over food. You can then feed the worms to your fishes.The biggest thing to remember about growing white worms is to never let the medium dry out.

It is also a good idea to have two cultures growing at the same time, in case one of the cultures "crashes." Keep an eye out for mold, feed the worms appropriately, and you will have happy, vigorous fish! Alden Smith is an award winning author. His website at King Discus is filled with information and articles relating to the hobby. This article is one of a series on Discus fish. Find more at his site.

by William Berg

Eyes should be clear, not cloudy or popping out of the sockets. Fins are erect, especially the top fin (dorsal). Buckled fins can mean trouble. No ragged, torn or ripped fins. All of them should be intact. Scales are flat and smooth, stomach is well rounded, girth of the entire body is of normal size, not bloated or sunken. Visible fish waste should be dark in color, not pale.

You should also examine their behavior! Healthy fish should breathe normally, not guzzling for air or hanging around the top of the tank where its mouth kissing the top of the water. Compare the gill movement of a fish with other fish in the tank. Extremely rapid gill movement may be a sign of stress. The fish should interact well with another fish, as they pass each other, moving out, etc. Healthy fish should swim in a horizontal motion (not with its head up or down with a few exceptions) throughout the aquarium—not just creeping around the corners or hiding all the time.

Don’t pick a fish that allows itself to be bullied or likes to bully others! Spend some time watching the fish you’re interested in buying maybe a good advice. Sometimes you’ll see things you didn’t notice right away. Watch how it behaves for a while. Only buy fish that eat well! If possible watch them being fed, as this is very important. You don’t want to have a wonderfully beautiful fish that only lasts a day, right?

It would be wise too to check fish prices. Unusually cheap price should be questioned, as there are some dangerous yet awfully cheap methods to caught fish today, like using cyanide and drugs. Cheap prices don’t have to mean poor quality. And make sure that the fish be caught with two nets. Thats the best, since using one net will usually only result in a crazy chase around the tank, making the fish extremely stressed. William Berg has over 20 years of aquarium experience and has written this article for: http://www.aquaticcommunity.com where you can find information about all kinds of aquarium related issues. Ask your aquarium questions on http://www.aquaticcommunity.com/forums.html.