Nightcrawler breeding?

[drewnation]

How difficult would it be to grow nightcrawlers? Where should I buy the first few to start my colony, petsmart is selling them for like 3.99 each, I guess they are pretty big but that can get costly. Are there any alternative worms that I could cultivate that may be cheaper and just as nutritious?

[Bombina Bob]

Hi there
Ive never heard of petsmart selling nightcrawlers before? I usually get mine on rainy nights under logs or under rocks when nightcrawlers come out. I remember i caught one that was 3 foot long! i would check fishing stores for fishbait, these guys wont breed in the container they have but you can put them into a 5 to 10 gallon tank, and i repeat DO NOT USE ECO EARTH AS SUBSTRATE, ive made this mistake a couple times and have had the worms die, use natural soil from the back yard without fertalizers, i feed my worms coffe grounds, old vegitables and all other compost that is not meat based, to get them to breed, i spray my tank of Nightcrawlers every other day for a week and have a dry period for two days and repeat thge spraying. you wont be able to see the nightcrawler babies for a while untill they pop up as very tiny worms that are yellowish and only an inch long. Ive had success with this method for a long time. i hope this helps!

Other worms similar to nightcrawlers would be redworms or earthworms, redworms or red wigglers have small white rings around their body usually sold in the aquatic section of a petstore or in a baitshop,earthworms are just smaller versions of nightcrawlers. same stratagies to breed, Hope this helps!

[drewnation]

Thanks for the response, how many adults do you have running and how many offspring are the producing? I'm trying to get some crickets going right now but realized worms are better so trying to get a lot of info before jumping into it. Also, I live in Arizona so there's not really rainy days here as well logs and stuff lol.. its a desert.. heh

[TheHornedToad]

Canadian nightcrawlers only breed in cold environments so don't use those to try and breed.

[fish4all]

There are large composting worms that can be bred rather easily. European night crawlers and African night crawlers are 2 that I know of. They breed in warm temps and are easy to feed and culture. You can even gut gut load them in your bins by feeding mainly vegetable and fruit scraps instead of grain but I don't know if it would make much difference but I am definitely NOT an authority on that issue with worms or anything else when it comes to gut loading.

[yoshimi]

I have cups of European Nightcrawlers I bought from walmart. They're $3 for 30, I think. I haven't seen worms at petco, but I haven't been for a while.

From the 1st cup I bought, that had the best peat moss, I've seen little green eggs. They were in fridge for a while, so I wouldn't expect those to hatch, but since they looked the best, and the only cup I've seen eggs in, I've saved it, with some of the original worms, and after toad ate all 30 from 2nd cup, moved 1st cup and 3rd out of fridge.
I'm not sure how many worms I have left, between the 2 cups. They are at room temp now. I feed mostly from most recently purchased cup. The soil in that one is kind of rocky and dry even when I mist it, and I think they might be older worms. Those were purchased from different walmart than 1st cup (pic below) and I had to root around to find one that wasn't mostly dead or moldy. Definitely check 1st.
They are awesome feeders and Banjo loves them so I don't mind buying them, (from the right store) but my question is, could this egg hatch? Would be pretty cool if it did. (just took this pic, egg was sitting at the top.) No dead worms found so far, but no apparent babies that I've seen either. I dampen soil once in a while with treated water. Anything I can do to facilitate hatching? Not really interested in breeding them in bulk, but it would be nice to end up with a whole new cup of worms without going out and buying a whole new cup of worms.

[Mentat]

...petsmart is selling them for like 3.99 each..

Wow... and I thought was being robbed when paying $2.50 a dozen last year. Get a colony going, lots of info and starter cultures here: Worms Etc Worms Etc Web Store Red wiggler worms, European nightcrawlers Red Wigglers and More! . Can even get worms in Amazon . Good luck !