Seeking white worm guru?

[YeW]

Hi Guys -

I've not had great success with my white worm culture. Which I keep in a 20 litre styrofoam box with a potting mix/shell grit (20:1) mix. I feed oats and try my best to keep it cool with frozen water bottles.

The worms seem to survive but not multiply - any ideas?

Looking for information on what foods get the worms going??

Cheers -

[MollyMan]

maybe try adding some greens... rotting vegetable matter might work... (remove it after a while though)

other than that I am not sure, other than yeast or a yeast extract... my grandparents used to cultivate worms (mainly earthworms) for gardenning purposes, and rotten fruit & vegies usually did the trick for them... they had about 10 foam boxes similar set up to what you have going...

HTH

[Colfish]

hi yew

try dampening white bread with a solution of mild yeast [2ml/1ltr water] also any starchy leftovers [rice pasta mash potatoes; but never anything greasy.] i would also look at temp. will survive @ 18 but will stess & not multiply do better @ lower temps. keep base mix damp to keep humidity up. try putting a piece of glass/perspex over the bread to maintain humidity in the food area. check ph imo shellgrit can run to high-- should be around 7

regards colfish

[Daniel]

Yew,

I've been playing around with WW's for a while and have observed the following. Ideal temps are 15-21 degrees, with 18deg optimum. Above 24 deg and death is very possible. Ph of soil should be around 7 (as per colfish). Use a light soil and keep it fairly moist, use a water spray. I feed mine Heinz high protein baby cereal. I was mixing the Heinz with water before feeding, but now I just sprinkle it on and spray it with a little water for efficiency. The hardest part for me is remembering to change the water bottles. I recently murdered virtually the whole lot by not placing them in the fridge when I went away for a weekend. I seriously had to start again with about 6 worms still alive !

To extract lots of worms without the dirt, I leave the container on an aquarium light fixture and the heat makes them rise in about an hour or so. If you leave them on the light fixture the heat will kill them a few hours later.

cheers

Daniel

[Alan]

White worm Guru ???

I got my first white worm starter by mail from a Killi fish breeder in England about 1968.

Still got descendants of those first few worms. Mind you I have had some monumental wipe outs, and nothing,,,,absolutley nothing!!! stinks like a big thriving WW culture that suffers "Melt-down" in Summer.

These days my worms live in an old frig in the fish shed. Just a little too cool for maximum production, but at least they do reproduce and grow, tho be it slowly.

My most productive WW years were when I had access to the celler of an old ice works. Under ground, insulated with a couple of feet of charcoal between brick walls, constant temperature at 18C, just the place for your red collection! But I was not into plonk in those days.

We did all sorts of magical things in those days to make growing medium. Burried compost in pits in the garden for a year, cooked it in the oven (narrowly avoiding divorce), made special wooden boxes, and generally mucked around like arseholes not knowing what the hell we were doing.

Then, as a mature age student I went back to Uni. BSc (life sciences), then, for fun, Tafe, Dip AppSc (hort). OMG ! what are we doing to these poor worms??? that they even survive what we are putting them through is testiment to their robustness.

A rappid review of all factores in WW culture. These days I use "old" potting mix. Stuff that plants have been growing in for a season or two. Sieve it to get the big lumps out. A handfull or two of Ag lime to stabelize pH (very scientific) and into the worm boxes. Add the starter worms and a bit of food and wet till just right. Like you would your pet cactus.

Now feeding. Forget bread, bread and milk, veg scraps, baby food, cheese, and all the rest of the exotics. I use mashed potatoe, cooked rolled oats, cat and dog bickies. Rotate them like you do your fish foods. If the growing medium gets too dry, soak the the dog or cat bickies. If it gets too wet, use dry food.

Don't spread the food all over the culture. Place it like 2 worm lengths apart, on a 2 inch (5cm) grid pattern. This way the worms clump to the feeding sites and are easy to harvest.

Avoid the two disaster senarios = too wet or too hot and your cultures should produce heaps.

Alan

[Fins]

Hi Yew,

I don't consider myself a WW GURU, but I'll tell you my experience.

I've never had any real success with white worms until I kept them in a fridge.

This tends to keep to red mites away as well. Frozen bottles are a real pain without much success IME.

Don't concern yourself too much about what to feed them, just what is convenient for you. Personally I just use bread, oats and brewers yeast mashed up with water. This is exactly the same mixture I use for my microworms as well so it's easier for me.

I've had them for about a year now. No problems yet.