Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

According to the information I have gathered, BSF & worms get along really well. The BSF can eat things worms can't, and the worms thrive off of the BSF droppings. My thoughts were to layer them. BSF would go through the fresh garbage, breaking it up for the worms (since they eat the bacteria that surrounds decaying garbage). The worms would clean up the BSF droppings, and then the castings could be collected from the bottom.

I was thinking of either using a barrel tipped at 45 degrees, with an opening in the bottom for the worm castings, and a drain for drippings, or making something more custom.

Wouldn't the high ammonia levels caused by the BSF larva hurt the worms? I have never measured it but I just cleaned out my composter due to such suprisingly strong odor. Smelled stronger than floor stripper. May have been because I had fed them large quantities of pears strawberries, fruits and lettuce. Composter may need better drainage, and more stuff like lawn clippings. Just seems like worms would need a little more gentle envirnoment.

According to this:

http://blacksoldierfly.blogspot.com/200 ... lture.html

BSF help chop stuff up and their castings make excellent fodder for the fungi and bacteria that worms live off of.

If there's high ammonia content, you may want to "flush" that out occasionally with water that is then either run to the dirt garden, or circulated back to the AP beds for nutrients. (depending on your fish load and/or frequency of washing, and/or what the BSF/Vermiculture combination are digesting).

Preferred types of worms for Vermiculture.
1) red wigglers/tiger : Eisenia foetida, E.foetida Andrei, Lumbricus Rubelles
2) European nightcrawlers: Eisenia Hortensis
3)African nightcrawlers: Eudrillus Eugeniae
I understand the European night crawlers and red wigglers like the same temp conditions. 55F/13c - 78F/26c, 6.0 to 7.0 ph
but the nightcrawlers get 3 times as large.
I also understand the Africans cannot take the cold and stop breeding below 65F/18c but can thrive in hotter temps than the others 85F/30c and grow larger and faster and more prolific than the others.
I ordered a lb. (1000ct) of the Eisenia foetida for my new worm farm. But I am thinking of getting another worm farm for some Africans being they are the most heat tolerant.

I would expect the strong odor from the composter being based on the inputs. Worms do like a gentler environment and there needs to be some bedding as well as food for them to be happy and to keep the humans dealing with the bins happy. It is much like composting, if you make the pile too wet or give it too much high nitrogen stuff, it will stink, if it stinks it usually means you need more carbon material like shredded paper, cardboard, straw, etc or you need to dry it out some which is often done by adding more dry carbon material etc. Regular compost and worm compost are very similar in their requirements, needing air entraining carbon materials and also nitrogen rich feed materials as well as some but not too much moisture. Main differences being that you don't want your worm bin to heat up and cause your worms to escape or die. As to BSF, they can do just fine in a regular worm bin providing the adult flies can gain access to it to lay the eggs. BSF can also enjoy conditions that would be too wet, too hot, too acidic, etc for worms but I don't know that you are likely to create perfect conditions for each in a layer system. Also worms are not always good about moving out of the castings according to a human designed schedule.

My main advise when designing any type of worm bin is to make it ant proof. The only way I know to ant proof an outdoor worm bin is to put it on legs what can be placed in containers of mineral oil (water works but evaporates and breeds mosquitoes.) Then make sure there are no other pathways for ants to get past the motes of mineral oil. Things like blades of grass, vines, sticks, or anything else that touches the table/stand or bin that has any sort of path to the ground or any other object will provide ants a way into the bin and ants in a worm or BSF bin totally suck.

Good advice on the legs set in mineral oil, I definitely plan on using it. I plan on having the worm bin under like a patio cover on concrete slab in the shade. Plan on making 4 pipe legs with screw flanges and set the pipes in jars of oil. How are your worms holding up to this heat wave? From your comment about them not moving on a schedule I had better have several for harvesting worms. How many worm farms would one need to get 1/2 lb of worms per day in optimum temps? BTW I purchased the 5 bin worm factory was only $80. the can of worm was $125. I will probably get more as finances permit. Not sure what to expect per factory harvest or how often they can be harvested.

I think my worms are doing fine but I haven't been digging through the bins much. I have found that for harvesting castings without having to pick out worms, the easy way to do it is have an extra worm bin handy. Put a screen or cloth in the bottom (this will be to make lifting out the castings easier in the future) then put feed stuff and bedding on top of that screen to several inches thick. Then lay another screen/cloth over it, on top of that screen/cloth put the mostly finished worm casting with the worms from another bin. Given some time, the worms will migrate down into the new feed/bedding and you will be able to lift off the screen load of finished castings for use in the garden. The longer you leave the casting layer, the more cocoons will hatch and the new worms can migrate down into the new feed. Then when that bottom feed/bedding layer gets mostly finished you can lift it up and place over the other bin to do the operation again. This method works well for keeping your worm farm harvested of castings without having to pick through the castings by had to separate out the worms which is a very tedious task. I've found that the worms would rather migrate down than up it seems. If I try putting a screen over the mostly finished castings and placing new feed/bedding on top, only part of the worm population migrates up. The other part of the population tends to hang out down in the moist castings where the juices from the rotting food are dripping down to. Putting the finished castings on top tends to let them dry out a bit and expose them to more light which will both drive the worms down into the fresh stuff. So this lends me to suggest that when you get a finished bottom layer to a stacking system, you should then stick that layer on the top to let the worms migrate down into the feed layers.

However if you are trying to collect worms rather than harvest castings...... Hum.... Perhaps you take a layer that has lots of worms in it and put some special treat they really like in there so they will collect together and let you grab a squirming mass of them all at once in a couple of days.

Hum. If you want to be harvesting 1/2 lb of worms per day, I think you will need a huge amount of worm bins to do it and a huge amount of bedding and feed stuff for the worms or you will find yourself buying more worms when you finally run out of most of your supply. Then again, There might be another way but I've not done the experiments to see it work for myself. Here is a link to something I read a few years ago on red worms.
http://www.jetcompost.com/burrow/tbp4.htm
Based on my two worm bins (each bin is 2 foot by 4 foot), I don't think I could harvest that many worms each day and still have many worms left to keep breeding and eating garbage after the first two weeks. Granted, we kinda neglect our worms a bit but constant digging in the bins also has a negative impact on the worms. I suppose part of our problem is we have chickens that like to eat much of our kitchen scraps and left overs so the worms don't get as much as they used to.

Powerful piece of reading TC thanks.
It does change my ideas of the small stackable worm bins.
Intresting how she learned to manipulate their environment to get higher populations of smaller adult worms then transfer them to new bins to growout to normal size, and that the smaller worms are effected much less than larger ones to moves. Also her use of deeper bedding to allow the worms a place to move to retreat from hostile areas within the bin and find their prefered moisture content which means just like in ap the larger system changes slower and is more easy to manage those changes.

Your are right TC, the 1/2 lb per day is way unrealistic when looked at from 4 lbs per square ft per year max. As soon as the composting worms come in I will start the little worm factory going but from the foot print will make 4 lbs per year if lucky or about a 1/2 lb per month (average) during the warmer months and just survive winter. Or about 30 of those things! The can o worms hold twice that so would have only needed 15
I went to your personal web page and saw the photo of your large worm bin and made me think about possibly using an IBC for one. It even has the worm tea valve on the bottom! It would need to be partitioned for ease and cut to a workable height. Too many projects that need completing but may start thinking thru on a rainy day!

Success!!! The composting worms are alive and well!
Infact they ate most all the shredded paper and cardboard and there were worm castings underneith the paper. Will start adding a little more paper/cardboard (if my light duty shredder can handle it) and coffee grinds and stuff! This was my third try (first with the right worms!) Not sure if these guys will get big enough to sort for fish food so may try some africans or europeans later. Just going to learn how to keep them happy and healthy for now. I added some plain earth worms to the ap growbeds and they are also alive and well.
Ah... life is good!

My worm bins are in an old dog kennel that is well shaded. They are wood bins 2 foot by 4 foot and the bedding/material in them is usually about a foot deep. So long as the material in the bins is moist, it seems to say cool enough.

I want to report success at my newest attempt at harvesting castings and getting the worms to move out of them.

In the past we had tried putting a layer of screen over the finished castings and then putting fresh bedding/food on top of the screen. This only sort of worked. Many worms would move up into the new material but lots of worms stayed down in the castings too. I guess the juices dripping down from the rotting food just made the castings tasty enough to keep the worms down there.

New method.....
1- Place fresh bedding and food stuff in bottom of cleaned out worm bin.
2- Place screen or sturdy open weave fabric over the fresh food/bedding
3- Put the finished worm castings with worms on top of screen
4- After some period of time, check through the castings to see if the worms have moved down to the fresh stuff.
5- sift (optional) and use the castings as you wish.

I did this not to long ago and I think I maybe found 2 worms in the whole ten gallons of sifted castings I went through. This was far easier than going through piles of worms mixed with castings and scraping the castings off the top while the worms burrow deeper. Seems to be far easier on the worms too. Only drawback I see is having to lift out all the older material to then re-fill the bin with fresh stuff before putting the older material back on top of the screen. It does help dry out the castings a bit which can make handling easier though.

I will definitely use this method again and again.

Excellent TXLynx......I am thinking your concept would work for BSF aswell. Thanks for sharing

The only really different thing between a worm bin and a BSF bin would be a ramp to a collecting bucket for the BSF larva. I'm not sure that the layer harvesting I'm doing is all that compatible with BSF larva harvesting but BSF larva do reside in my worm bins. What usually happens is they seek out the crack around the edge of the bottom of my bins and fall to the concrete or mineral oil containers below to perish. Might be nice if I could collect them neatly to feed to the fish and chickens but I really haven't put any thought into it so far.

I have not been trying very hard to grow worms or BSF larva as feed for the fish/chickens. I have mainly been collecting worm castings for use in the gardens.

TC, what are you using as stackable containers inside the worm bin to allow you to sort new material on the bottom?