Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I know this isn't a worm forum but I think lots of aquaponicers have worm farms so I thought you might have some advise....

We set up our first worm farm a few days ago and noticed this morning that there are quite a few worms in the bottom collector tray. Some swimming, some drowning.

Why have our worms opted for suicide

signed,
The Worm Killer

Hmmm, what type of music do you play to them?

Chrissy, when we got our first worm farm many years ago, the instructions included putting an up-turned ice-cream box in the bottom juice collector tray. Scuff it up with sand-paper, to give them some grip. That way if any worms fall into the juice tray, and they can get back to the ice-cream box, they can climb back up and out of danger.

I'm actually cutting and pasting from my own post in

Backyard Aquaponics Forum Index » Informal Aquaponic Discussions » General System Discussions » Earth Worms

Exciting news re keeping composting worms. I have been experimenting with my worm farm, most recently with regularly adding large volumes of water to it. I have a "can of worms" worm farm, which includes instructions that adding a couple of litres of water once a week to increase the worm tea available shouldn't hurt the farm. Well, I've been adding the entire of a 12L bucket every other day that I get to it, and there has been only an increase in the number of worms in the farm, and LOTS of worm tea for the garden.

In my opinion just don't add so much scrap that there's heaps of heat from composting, and add as much water as you feel u need to water the garden. The worms do much better when it's wet.

I'm especially excited because one weekend I plan to set up a system using only worm tea for nutrients - no large fish tank available yet.

so, chrissy, add more water!

actually, don't flood out the new growing system
what kinda settup do yuou have?
what are you keeping them in?

13nny I have a can o worms too and I think the suicide thing was that I wasn't adding water often enough and they were going deeper to keep cool. Now its cooled down I'm only adding water every few days but when it was warm I was watering every day. I would guess though that the worm tea can be either diluted on condensed according to how much water is running through the worm beds.
I'm very new at worm farms so please correct me if I've got it wrong.

Chrissy

G'day all,

totally agree with the watering, every day is best but the common problem with those 3 tier style wf's is if you dont regularly drain the catch tray water builds up and quickly turns the whole thing anerobic, best advice, take the tap out and use a bucket to catch all the tea. I generally use the tea to either rewater the worms or put straight on the plants needing a feed, it will make passionfruit pump . It's perfect for getting a new aquaponic system working as its pack full of microbes. .