Two failures in home grown food cultivation

[Warrensmentor]

For the past 3 months, I have been working on two breeding projects for a food source. 1 is black worms and the other is red cherry shrimp. first I'll talk about the shrimp. I ordered a dozen red cherry shrimp and put them in a 10 gallon tank with a sponge filter, gravel, lots of java moss and 1 ornament. when I first got the red cherry shrimp they were tiny. 2 months later they are still tiny, not worthy of being fed to my rays and they have not bred. now they may not be fully mature but if it takes this long for them to fully mature then they are worthless as a side source of food. so I guess I'll just buy ghost shrimp 6 for a dollar when my rays want a snack. secondly I tried to culture california blackworms. Id read it was easy. I put about a third of a pound into that 10 gallon with gravel and java moss and a sponge filter, and 2 months later I still have not seen them so I did some gravel vacuuming and pulled up a bunch of dead worms. Eff live food culturing.

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[joe jaskot]

Most live foods are easy to raise once you learn how to do it. For feeding rays, you need to raise something large like earthworms or red worms. You could never raise enough blackworms in a 10 gallon tank to feed rays. Instead of cherry shrimp, try raising marmorkrebs (self cloning crayfish). They reproduce like crazy and grow quickly.

 

[anarekist]

hmm the worms need something to eat. like fish poop and dead plant matter..
the cherry shrimp, think takes awhile to for a mature population to form then they will lay eggs and breed like crazy. prolly just needed to give it more time or buy mature shrimp out the bat.

 

[Warrensmentor]

I still have the cherries working, but I'm done with black worms. I just got done talking with Venom Stinger and we're going to set up a 110 gallon self cloning crayfish colony.

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[kamikaziechameleon]

black worms are easy but don't know why you used substrate, and sponge filter in a bare bottom with no decore and no light is enough, just drop in a little crushed flake every day and change the water once a week and your good. They like substrate but this makes it harder to harvest and observe them while keeping the tank "clean"

 

[Greg31]

Just use some gravel so they have place to hide. Easy to siphon out.

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[Warrensmentor]

I fed flake and used 2 inch bed of gravel substrate. Bare bottom isn't a bad idea, just those who I read inductions from said they like to live in substrate.

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[Kaosu]

...you might of lost your black worms due to heat..they die off quickly if there tank gets to warm...don't give up !! they are really easy once you get the hang of it.