[Stuart60611]

I had an idea for a rather simple blackworm keeper. What I was thinking of doing is simply taking a small aquarium, like a spare 20 long I have now, filling the bottom with a layer of large plastic bioballs and filling it up with ro/di water about a inch or so over the bioballs (2-3 inches total height). The bioballs would serve the dual purpose of both providing some shelter for the worms and keeping water conditions high. I would attach an air pump and airstone or two for oxygenation, and that is it. I would first cycle the tank for a few weeks with some shrimp and live bacteria (microbacter) and would think the system would develop a biofilter sufficient so that once stocked with worms I would rarely have to do much water changing and just merely top off. Once the system cycled, I would then add 1/2 - 1 lb of worms which I would feed daily with sinking pellets. I would periodically buy more worms in bulk to replenish every few months, and use this system primarily to keep large amounts of worms periodically purchased in bulk alive and fat for months at a time until fed to my fish. To harvest I would think would not be all that hard because I could just move a bunch of the large bioballs out of the way and then scoup them out and replace water removed with fresh ro/di water. I also read of another guy who came up with a great harvesting technique. What he did is take a small plastic jar, put some food in the jar, and poked holes in the lid. The worms crawled in jar and then he removed the jar and fed the worms therein to his fish. This could be an option if the first method was not effective. Could this work?