Lumbricus terrestris

[alan]

On Saturday, Mike East recommended WormsDirect to me as a good source of Lumbricus terrestris for Salamandra:
http://www.wormsdirectuk.co.uk
Looks good to me. Two questions:
How do you store them, and how long do they keep?
Feel free to chime in here Mike, anyone?

 

[mike]

Hi Alan,
The lobworms supplied by this company are collected and imported from Canada, as they cannot be bred commercially.
Worms Direct then rests and feeds the worms, before dispatching to customers by overnight courier.
On arrival, worms in the medium container supplied are placed in the bottom of my sal fridge, at a maximum temperature of 5 degrees C.
I buy in bulk, (400 worms) and they remain in pristine condition for at least 6 weeks.

 

[juraj]

10l (35*25*12) container filled with forest top soil stored in the fridge at 6-9°C. This way is possible keep about 0.5 kg worms for months. Well tried, but it necessitates a tolerant fellow.

 

[kamil]

In Germany we have "Superwurm" http://www.superwurm.de - they breed and sell Dendrobaena or so... It's said to be good but I have no experience with that.

 

[alan]

I breed my own Dendrobaena, but I gather most Salamandra won't touch them, right?

 

[morg]

Alan
The Salamandra you have there should eat them as they ate them while here.
{dendrobaena veneta]

 

[mike]

Alan...If you offer juvenile Salamandra chopped Dendrobaena that have been rinsed thoroughly, they will soon accept their bitter taste, and consequently go on to feed on whole worms.

 

[alan]

They may be a little out of practice since they left Morg's tender care, so some re-education may be needed.
As you say, rinsing is important for Dendrobaenas to remove the excess yellow yeuk.

 

[leighton]

That's where we get our earthworms from. We keep them in a 45 litre kitchen bin in the garden shed, containing about 20 litres of (very much moistened) John Innes compost. They are transferred to this container on arrival. We feed the worms on moistened oatmeal every few days (about a palmful each time, and only re-feed when all the previous feed has gone). The compost is moistened regularly with tap water. I'm thinking about obtaining some calcium supplement to dust on to the oatmeal, in case we have a problem with calcium deficiency in our axolotls.