seramis for grindal worms dangerous?

[Dorothee Jöllenbeck-Pfeffel]

Hi!
Here I bring a question (the search couldn’t help me):
I am setting up three new boxes for grindal worms. I have bought indoor seramis (the outdoor variation contains a lot of fertiliser).
It is written on the packaging, that indoor seramis containes clay and calium….
I have searched and found nothing about that, even not in the articles of Martin Hallmann.
The only thing recommended is, to wash seramis with hot water, go wash out the fines red particles….

Do you all do it that way? Or is that calium dangerous for the worms/the fish?

[Arno Beißner]

Hello Dorothee,
unlikely, even if there is something in it.
I regularly use fertilizer with iron, calium etc.
Of course in small quantities. So far, nothing negative noticed.

[Dorothee Jöllenbeck-Pfeffel]

O.k. Calium also seems to me not to be too dangerous… and I washed the seramis very clean….
Any other ideas here? Perhaps I am again the only one who worries about this? 😉

[Bill Little]

Dorothee — Seramis appears to be a plant growing material? I have checked and it is not available in the USA. Can you describe how it is prepared to grow grindal worms?

[Dorothee Jöllenbeck-Pfeffel]

Hi Bill!
Seramis is made in Germany from 100% burned red clay. They have told me that the indoor stuff would not contain any additional fertilizer. Calium would be contained naturally in clay …. Normaly you use that stuff instead of soil for plants. A kind a f hydro cultivation…..
If you have the possibility to get clay and a place where they burn it for you , you could use such kitchen tools to press noodles through or cooked potatoes to get clay worms and cut the clay worms afterwards in small pieces. Than you have o burn the pieces at about 950 degrees Celsius.

[Bill Little]

Thanks Dorothee — so you take this seramis material and place it in a container and add a culture of grindal worms. Do you add water to material? Of course you must feed the culture also. I have been utilizing “Green Scubbie Pads” and I have had limited success. When it is time to start a new culture I remove one pad and move it to a new container and start the process over again.

[Dorothee Jöllenbeck-Pfeffel]

Hi Bill!
I just wash the clay material, to wash out the very small powder of clay. Then I sieve the water out. So the material is not wet but damp.
Then I add the starting culture of Grindal. When the worms have hidden in the ground, I add on the surface very soft smelting oatmeal (Haferflocken). As Martin Hallmann tells in his article in the Makropode 2015, you can also add some good dry fish food and one Omega 3 fish oil Gelatine – Capsule (Hallmann said, that that perhaps brought back the red colour to his Paros …).
And he waits till the food is all eaten – then he washes the worms with water out of the box. I do it about two times a week. You have to be careful that no water remains standing on the bottom of the box. This regularly washing seems to prevent mites to develop in the culture. Till now all works well!

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