Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I have some questions about the worms. My understanding from looking around here is that most of you guys put the compost worms directly into your gravel beds, yes? Are these the flood and drain type beds? I ask because I wonder what keeps the worms from drowning during the flood cycle. I feed them to my fish and they don''t wiggle very long before they look dead at the bottom of the tank, could they survive a half hour submersion 10 times a day?

Second, I am running a dutch pot system. Will I have to put worms in each individual pot, or will the eggs migrate by themselves with the water flow?

some people haven't put the worms in themselves... the worms magically appear in the growbeds, seemingly without human intervention
The worms seem to survive okay, if they are worried about the water rising they can migrate up through the gravel and then back down again when the tide falls.
I will be putting some from the worm farm in each of the beds on the weekend. I've also put a couple from the yard in some of the beds. I'll do this simply because I've got heaps of worms in the farm and I want to

She always gets what she wants!

Thanks! I am going to get some and give it a try.

Are people familiar with the RIRDC report:

EARTHWORMS
Technology information to enable the
development of earthworm production

Has a section on feeding earth worm meal to marron. Basic conclusion was that worm meal can replace fish meal with effect (+vely or -vely).
Unfortunalely they don't seem to mention the species that the worm meal was made from.

Stuart

ranpmiller,

Worms "drowning" is a common misconception becasue people see them dead in puddles of water after a rain.

Worms "breathe" though gas exchange through their "skin" i have seen compost worms sticking their head up out of the gravel in my tropical tank weeks after feeding some to the fish.

Basically, if the water has very high Dissolved Oxygen then the worms will be fine.

If you are going to add worms to your bed then i'd definatly go a compost worm variety, not an earthworm variety.

Steve

Hi people, I've just emptied and moved both the tanks and growbeds from my old system and I can confirm that I found heaps of live worms in the bottom of both! They were even living buried deep down in the gravel at the bottom of the marron tanks with all the yucky black silty smelly stuff. I didnt count but reckon there were at least 50 or so all up, I put all the ones I found into the growbeds on my new system.

S77, did you find more than what you put in there?

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.

cool l3, thanx for sharing.