Banana Worm Care

Banana Worm Care Sheet

Banana Worm (Panagrellus Nepenthicola)

Banana Worms Background:

Panagrellus Nepenthicola or banana worm is actually not a worm at all, but called a worm because of their minute size and worm like appearance. Banana Worms are actually a species of nematode, which grows on average to 1/16 of an inch or less or a little smaller in size than the micro worm. They are a slightly more productive worm than the micro worms though. They very tiny, and if you can’t see very close you might just miss them. Banana Worms are white-clear and have a worm like shape and movement. Banana worms are non-parasitic and live off of the bacteria and yeast from the banana culture medium. They live for about 35 days and a female banana worm can have 60 young a day at around 4 days old.

Banana Worms can live at temperature room temperatures, and optimum reproduction rate is at about 68-85F degrees.

Why Banana Worms?

Banana Worms are one of the best foods to start out for your newly hatched fish fry like killifish, guppies, betas, gouramis, tetra, barbs, danios, and many others. They are more size appropriate (1/16 inch or less) for very small fry that are not able to eat baby brine shrimp or micro worms. Banana Worms reproduce faster than micro worms, which make them easier to culture faster if you are short on time. Baby brine shrimp are often too large for some newly hatched fish fry to eat in the first couple weeks of life. Also, baby brine shrimp are harder to rear due to temperature, salinity, and growth restrains.

Banana Worms are perfect for rearing at room temperatures. Also, you don’t have to worry about rinsing the salt off of your worms. Simply a Q-tip or a small clean paintbrush, and remove the worms from the sides of your container. Removing banana worms from the sides will reduce debris contamination. Then, take your Q-tip or small paintbrush, and rinse it in your fish tank.

Remember over feeding of any food can cause a loose in a whole fry batch. The good thing about banana worms is that they can live in a tank of water for over 12 hours. Also, you don’t have to worry about banana worms getting too big for your new fish fry.

Banana Worms are easy to culture at home for a never ending supple of newly hatched fry food.

How to culture Banana Worms:

There are several ways to culture Banana Worms. You just have to be able to meet their environmental needs. The container we provided for you, which your Banana worms are in, is only a temporary home for shipping purposes.

You will need a container or two to hold you worms in. Plastic transparent containers work best.

You can purchase 32 oz. plastic containers and screen mesh lids from us.  We use them for fruit flies and worm cultures.  They work well.

 

Banana worms need oxygen to survive, but now we need to keep out other pests from our Banana worm culture. That is where our screen lids come in.  They do both, ventilate and keeps pests out.

You will need to prepare food for your Banana worms. 

We suggest you use our proven CRAZY WORM FORMULA.  We raise 100's of Banana Worm Cultures on this formula.  Simply add aged water and bakers yeast and you're  good to go.