Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

My system is hydraton upstairs, and salt and pepper gravel downstairs. I thinking about adding some worms. Should i add the worms clean, or does a bit of organic matter hurt or will it block the system? Does it matter how many worms I add?

When I find a worm I toss it in the gb if you have plants for a while and solids get trapped by the gb the worms will love it. Don't be disheartened though. I tossed worms in and never saw them again, however now there are a few in my gb that you can see when digging. Just lob em in an see what happens. They will breed. Too many may cause a food shortage and you may lose some.
Worms are like bacteria, they occur naturally and increase in numbers proportionally to the food available.
Add some but not heaps IMHO. Composting worms are good, but i've been indiscriminant, and have a couple of times seen big earthworms in the gb too.

thanks mate

It is the best thing you can possibly do to an AP system. It increases the capacity of the growbed to filter solids by about 500%.

Maybe slightly exagerated.

I tend to place a bucket o' worms (1000 or so) onto the top of the bed near the water inlet, and then remove the organic matter a month or so later.

Any worms I then find later while removing/planting in the bed, get moved to other beds. The cycle continues until all beds are full of worms.

And I can not see it harming anything if what you add contains some bedding/castings; after all, the worms should eat that handful of stuff pretty well.

Yep, I added about 1500 worms into each 500: growbed... got no idea how many there are now... but whenever I pull something out... the root ball is full of them...

I like to add a hand full of good worm castings along with the worms into a new grow bed. The castings are a good source of all sorts of good microbes. I don't think any one of my grow beds got more than a good hand full of worms and my hands are small. They all have quite a few worms now. 12-1200 worms per bed, I don't think it matters much a year later.

I've been wondering this for some time now:
1 - Add worms to a new grow bed? Others say only add them to a bed that is around 12 months or more as there wont be anything much for them to eat until then.. My GB is only 3 months now and I reckon there'd be stacks to eat.

2 - Most importantly, what effect if any does the worm pee have on fish health? Is it a natural bactericidal or something similar? Does it cause any harm to the fish tissue i.e. taste, make them prone to infections, etc? Does anyone know? I'm very curious.

3 - Does the worm pee effect pH and add to overall ammonia levels? Does it discolour the water?

Cheers
T

As soon as you see any "solids" going into the growbed there will be food for the worms.


I have never heard of any worm effects that are not beneficial to AP, although I have not heard of any effect on fish flavor or water color or clarity.
I'm sure worms add a little to the ammonia levels of a system (especially if some die during initial introduction), but as long as you are adding an appropriate amt of worms things should be fine. Just don't go nuts and add a half-kilo to a 100 liter system.
Does anyone have suggested stocking levels? Around here we can buy a half-lb of worms (reg-wigglers) at our local nursery. Does anyone have a clue about how much feed to the fish would end up feeding the worms well? I generally figure on adding a few worms per liter of growbed....

Well for stocking of worm bins that are full of shredded cardboard and kitchen scraps you would want about a half pound of worms per square foot probably if you expect them to work on eating the scraps quickly. However, a grow bed is not a worm bin.

As I noted before, I put a hand full of worms per grow bed, so that was a small worm ball with castings per 150 gallons or so of gravel. They managed to find each other and breed cause a year or so later there were plenty more worms to be found when I had to replace a couple of the beds.

The worms do tend to congregate where the solids build up at the inlets to the grow beds. Noticed huge numbers of worms in the monster bed today where the water used to go in.

Ok I might do the same then as I am getting quite a build up already at the outlets.
I'm still intrigued to know if the worm pee has any adverse or beneficial effects to the fish.. Or if it makes not a scrap of difference to them..
There's a research project in the making..

I just ordered 2 kg of worms....$ 240 later

I killed my last lot off by salting the system too high for the worms to handle. And I don't know how high, I just threw bag after bag of salt in, to save the Barra, when I first got them

I have been cleaning the root matter out of the beds, and there is a major dead spot....I am wondering if the worms will go in there and clean up ??? all the junk, as I still have a passion fruit vine sitting there?

Are you serious..??!! Are they gold plated? Don't know about anyone else but that sounds wee excessive isn't it? I purchased a 1kg pack containing 1000 worms (+/- ) from Mitre 10 last month for $29.95.

Just threw a handful into one GB tonight though right at the outlet where all the scraps are accumulating. Will be interesting to see how they go.

Hey Rupe I just thought of something. Are we talking about people adding ground worms here or compost worms? Or both?

Compost worms... Tony