White worms are an excellent live food for fish and are incredibly easy to raise. White worms (Enchytraeus albidus) are white-coloured worms which range in size from approximately 3/4" to1 1/2". If you are familiar with other live foods, they fall between tubifex and grindal worms in size. White worms are particularly good for conditioning fish for spawning. They are eagerly eaten by most fish and are suitable for a wide range of fish since their size is appropriate even for the smaller fish. My cultures are raised on Spirulina, which keeps the fat content low allowing you to feed more.

White worms are very easy to culture, use a plastic shoebox. You can often find these handy containers on sale at pound stores. Worms need to "breathe", so if the cover is airtight (although most are not) cut a hole in the cover and fill the hole with a piece of  foam.

Fill the container about with about 3-4 inches of  potting soil. Add water to wet the soil. The wetness should be such that tightly squeezing the soil should result in a few drops, but not a stream of water, dripping from the mass.

Add your starter culture of worms, and some food. Although many articles recommend milk-soaked bread for feeding the worms, my personal thoughts on this is that it creates a worm with a high fat content.To rapidly expand the population, try cooked rice. White worms love cooked rice. When first starting the worm culture, it is probably best to bury the food to stave off mold. The trick here is to feed the worms enough so that they reproduce quickly, but not so much that the food goes uneaten long enough to become moldy. If you do get some mold, just spoon it out and add fresh food (but not so much this time!).

There are a variety of food options. A mixture of breadcrumbs, kitchen waste (vegetables), and a bit of milk or water blended together works well. Instant oats, a boiled potato, or just white bread soaked in milk/water will also work. Food that goes bad should be removed to prevent mold and other bacteria infesting the culture. The blended mix or the soaked bread will provide the moisture needed in the soil, otherwise the soil can be sprayed once in a while to keep it moist.

Once your worm colony is thriving, you should be able to leave the food on the surface, which will facilitate harvesting of worms, as the worms gather on the surface to eat.

When the worm population is really going, the worms will form in big clumps near, and on top of, the food. Just use blunt tweezers to grab a blob of worms and drop them into the fish tank. Once the fish realize that the white things wriggling in the water are food and are tasty, they will eagerly snatch them up as soon as they hit the water. White worms like it fairly dark, and will start to dig back into the dirt once the shoebox cover is removed, so gather all the worms you need as soon as you open the cover, put them into a cup, and then drop the worms into the individual tanks.

If you need to gather a large amount of worms, another method is to put worm-laden soil into a sieve with its bottom barely submerged in water. Position a light directly over this set-up. The heat and light will eventually drive the worms out the bottom of the sieve and into the water, ready for feeding.

At times I have noticed that the population will get extremely dense, so dense that the worms are actually crawling up to the lid. Because the culture will sometimes crash at this density, I usually remove about half of the soil (with its worms) to a new container, and add more fresh damp soil to each container. Because cultures sometimes crash, I make sure to always keep at least two cultures going. This also evens things out as production fluctuates.

For maintenance, just throw in more food every few days and add some more water if the soil starts to become dry. Worm cultures are fairly hardy and can survive weeks, possibly months, of neglect (as long as they don't dry out)- although they may need care and feeding before you will be able to harvest enough to feed fish again. White worms usually do better at cooler temperatures, keep in a garage or shed to stay between 55 to 65 degrees for best results.