What kind of live food cultures do you keep?

Currently grindal worms, gammarus shrimp, micro worms, green water, vinegar eels intentionally. By luck seed shrimp, snails, detritus worms and tubifex worms.
I used to also have white worms, daphnia, fruit flies, black worms and brine shrimp.
I find grindal worms and micro worms to be the easiest.

garfieldnfish said:

I find grindal worms and micro worms to be the easiest.

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+1. Vinegar eels are also low maintenance.

MW WW BW grindals, scuds, daphnia, fruit flies, copepods. And my wife hates them all!

I wanted just blackworms but the seller threw in some daphnia and wild type do shrimp to breed for live food (will probably keep shrimp more as a pet until it's population is huge). I am also keeping mts and pond snails as "food cultures" so to speak, as they are in no tech bins for the purpose of breeding and becoming dwarf puffer food. Unfortunately all my cultures are new and very small quantities (except pond snails) so I might have to buy more (most likely just blackworms).

I have a few questions though:
How often do you feed a daphnia culture green water? Once a day? And when do you ditch and make a new batch of green water? Or just use it up then make a new one? I couldn't find specific info on this aspect of daphnia keeping.

I currently have a pretty good population of blackworms in my 120 gallon tank. They're not really visible until a foodstuff is placed in the tank.

Banana worms, microworms, vinegar eels, fruit flies, Grindal worms, daphnia, scuds, and greenwater. Banana worms, microworms, and fruit flies are all easily maintained in a Rice Krispie media.

I have tried micro worms before, but I couldn't stand the smell. I would really have to try fruit fly again

As for how feeding green water to daphnia, I would add more green water after the "green" disappears for a day or day.

+1 black worms
they cam be multiplied very easily, you can chop them down to feed micro fish or pick out small skinny ones. they eat just about ANYTHING. napkins are popular food source for them, or dead leaves or fish food. an airstone to keep water moving and a fishbowl or something to keep them in is all you need, I hear you can even do w.o the airstone but the water murks up faster for me w.o it
and literally everything in my tank loves them, even the oto's from time to time. and whatever worms your fish dont eat will bury into the substrate and help eat detritus and I believe they also can release gases

I was originally was going to do a dirted tank with sand cap and blackworms seeded (dwarf puffer tank with self sustained food) but my test with MGOPM and sand cap is leeching way too much ammonia to be safe to use for a rapidly setup tank... Will the worms live in just plain sand, most debris settles on top of sand rather than shifting down into it where they can eat it safely.
Also what temps are your tank(s) at that have black worms living in them? I read they like cold water but this would be a warm water set up, so not sure they would survive and be a constant repopulating food source in such an environment.

Thank you for the info.

Blackworms should be able to live in plain sand as long as you have some sort of food source for them. Mine mainly consist on whatever plant debris is in my tank , though I think they're pretty open. Recently I had a shrimp pass away and my blackworms left no trace of it within 12 hours.

I keep my tank in the high 70s/low 80s. I think they do fine at these temperatures. There's a lot of misinformation about blackworms spread around by live food vendors (if everyone kept blackworms in their tank then they'd be out of business).

Now I am interested in some black worms!
Whats the size of the container/tank you suggest to keep them in?
Would a layer of Eco Complete as substrate be ok for them?

I currently have blackworms in both a 120 and a 10 (the latter has aqua soil). They probably would be fine in Eco-complete. Any container of sufficient size to maintain stable parameters should do.


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I bought more blackworms that came yesterday, I'd planned to add about 1/2 of them to the dwarf puffer tank (puffers arrived 10 mins after worms). BUT they came with... Leeches! Yuck so I was forced to scramble and get some Tupperware containers to keep them in. Rinsed and removed as many leeches from the worms as I could but couldn't get them all. I only added a few to the aquarium using a needless syringe to suck some up and inspect for leeches before adding.
I have no clue if these leeches will nom on the fish, worms, or the mts I also put in their tank for snacks..

As anyways past the venting, dwarf puffers went in the tank after acclimating and were hunting and eating within minutes ^^

Well.. found out the hard way I kept the worms in too small a bins since I couldn't add them all to the tank (with the leeches mixed in). Found one bin of rotting worms today, went to pour it out.. the water was like blood. I can handle a lot of foul smells but that.. ugh too much x.x Might switch to only snails for the dwarf puffers, easier to keep and the smell of them in a container doesn't bug me... Get to go dig up a gas mask and un-clog the sink of half dissolved dead worms and blood water now.. Don't even want to check other bins to see how they're doing.
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SO lost 2 of the 3 bins of worms, one was all dead, the other was 1/2 dead so I dumped it all, split the survivors from the last Tupperware between two bins, see how they do.