Breeding Aulophorus furcatus
Aulophorus furcatus, also known as the water snake, naturally inhabits marshy and heavily silted parts of water bodies. The worm gets its name from its snake-like movement in water. Under natural conditions, the aulophorus feeds on dead plant parts. These worms are good food for many fish species and their fry.
Aulophorus furcatus are small, pink worms that are 0.2 mm thick and about 1-2 cm long. These worms are hermaphroditic.
To catch Aulophorus in their natural habitat you need to put the bait in a jar (banana or watermelon peel, shredded carrot, apple, fish meat, etc.) in the water, in a shallow area between twigs, snags and grass. Cover the jar with a lid with numerous small holes drilled in it or put a fine-meshed net on top. Leave the jar in the water for a few days. The aulophorus will crawl into the jar on the smell of the bait, and you will only have to remove the jar from the water and rinse the bait with water. At the bottom of the jar there will be worms rolled up into balls, which you carefully remove and place on a foam pad. You now have biomaterial for breeding Aulophorus at home.
Reproduction
For breeding aulophorus pick up a small vessel of about 10x10x10 cm. It is filled with water and equipped with an aerator. The water temperature should be between 22-28° C. Place worms and food (pieces of apple, carrot, banana peel, nettle leaves, etc.) in the vessel. The food is given daily for 3-4 days. It should be noted that the weight of the food should not exceed the weight of the aulophorus. Then the vessel is covered with a lid and placed in a dark place. Replace 80 % of the water in the vessel with fresh water daily. In 3-4 days you can already catch the worms to feed the fish. To do this, temporarily turn off the aeration, aulophorus are very sensitive to water oxygen saturation and with its lack of floating to the surface of water, where they can easily be fished out. To stimulate the worm population, you should not catch more than 20% of the worms in the tank every day. The worm population doubles every 10 days.
The cultivation of Aulophorus furcatus at home is generally not time consuming, and the process of feeding the fish is also very simple - switch off the aeration, remove the lid and catch the required number of worms, which are immediately transferred to the fish tank.
Aulophorus is particularly useful for fry, which develop quickly when fed them. The only thing you should not feed these worms to newly hatched fry, as they may be too large for them, although if necessary, aulophorus can also be cut into small pieces.
