# Vinegar eels/ microworms questions?



## JAB91 (Aug 30, 2011)

Okay. so i recently acquired a starter culture from ebay for some vinegar eels and microworms. Ive been doing a ton of research online and i keep getting some mix responses.

so i was wondering if you guess can give me some information. i want to hear your experiences, the pros, the cons, how nutritious they are, how long before starting a new culture, harvesting tips etc. I just want to hear how well they did or did not work out for you guys.
Thanks!


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## 1fish2fish (Sep 10, 2009)

Have you read the Fry Foods Sticky? That should give you some basic information.

Vinegar eels:
The pros of them is they live in the water for as long as 3 days, sometimes more which gives the fry more chance to eat before the eels start dying and fouling the water.

Cons are they're pretty small so can't really be fed much longer than 2 weeks and harvesting them can be a pain compared to microworms where you just scoop some off the side and dunk them in the water.

Depending on the size of your culture you want to re-culture every 1-2 months with VE. I use a gallon sized pickle jar and only reculture every 2 months and never have problems with my culture.

The way I harvest my VT is to suck some of the culture into a turkey baster. I then filter the culture through a coffee filter so the vinegar/water mixture falls back into the culture and the worms are caught in the filter. Then I flip the coffee filter into some tank water and swish it around so the worms fall off the coffee filter. Then I dump the eels in the tank water into the fry tank. Some people rinse them more but I've never had issues with doing it this method.


Microworms:
Pros.. very easy to culture and very prolific IME
Cons.. not very nutritious and best fed in conjunction with Banana and Walter worms for best nutrition. Are rumored to cause missing ventrals in fry but this is not proven. Sink almost immediately an will die pretty fast so daily tank vacuuming is necessary to prevent the water from fouling.

Reculture every 2 weeks, or every week depending on how prolific your culture is.

Harvesting is very easy. The worms will crawl up the side of the container out of the culture. All you need to do is take your finger (or a q-tip if you're squeamish) and wipe up some of the worms then dunk them in the tank.


I like both of these foods. I prefer to feed VE for the first few days then mix VE with micro worms, walter worms, and banana worms for the first 2-3 weeks then mixing in BBS. 

Out of all the microworms I highly recommend walter worms.. IME they are the most nutritious and last the longest out of the 3. But... like I said if you mix all 3 worms you're getting pretty good coverage of nutrition needs.


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## JAB91 (Aug 30, 2011)

Hmm. Yeah, I was planning on feeding the VE for the first couple weeksvthen mix in microworms and bbs. I heard you can mix microworms with banana worms and walterworms in a cocktail of of worms. Don't know how that'll work out. Also, do you have any experience with grindal and white worms? Sorry for all the questions, just wanna know if I should get some or not.


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## 1fish2fish (Sep 10, 2009)

Do you mean mix the worms like in the same culture? I wouldn't do that... I prefer to keep my cultures pure so I have one culture of each.

I would feed the VE for the first week and then start adding in the MW and then the BBS.

Grindal worms are great for when the fry are bigger, like 4-6 weeks depending on how fast they grow. I've had a few cultures but I've never been able to get the starter cultures to thrive.

I had a very nice culture of white worms (which are excellent adult food but too big for most fry IMO) but I neglected it and it died. White worms (and grindals) are harder to take care of than other cultures. White worms have to be kept refrigerated which some people don't like. Both of them need the right amount of moisture, not too much and not too little. And both do best in a dirt mixture. They have to be fed and too much feeding can yield mold, too little can mean dead worms.

Basically IME they're very hard to take care of... I wouldn't recommend them for a beginner.


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## JAB91 (Aug 30, 2011)

Yeah, I had read about some people doing that but I think ill keep mine separate.

I think I'm going to be relying on frozen bbs, I just don't have the time that live bbs requires 

Yeah I read its hard to keep them thrive well. Just wanted to here what others thought. 
Thanks for the responses 1fish2fish!


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## 1fish2fish (Sep 10, 2009)

I use frozen BBS for the most part. I'm trying to work on using live more often because the fry take to it better but I've had good luck with the frozen as well.


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## JAB91 (Aug 30, 2011)

Hopefully they like the frozen.


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