Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

i just started a small worm farm.

2 gal bucket(drill a lot of water holes, and net the holes so the worm don't try to escape out the bottom)
2 gal of garden soil
25 night crawlers(bought from walmart, but herd blood worms work better)

ill tell you how it goes, but from my research of this topic, i found that you feed them there wight in food scraps, soil not to wet and not to dry, they should reproduce them self's every 30 days, and ill also be able to collect worm castings for nutrients. now how great is that, great organic nutrients for your plants, high protein food for you fish, and a way to get rid of all that plant matter. i believe a worm farm would close the circle of life in aquaponic.

i don't have a aquaponic system yet, but what I'm using these worms are for fishing, i hate spending $4.00 on worm every time i go fish.

-df

I agree that worm composting helps close the loop in aquaponics. I'm thinking worm composting and grass hopper raising is the way to go, along w/ the veggies scraps and fish tank vegetation can keep me from buying fish pellets. Feeding my fish other ground up fish from the ocean isn't really sustainable. I'm setting up several worm composting bins along w/ my aquaponcis. Generally a more shallow (10 inches plus) container that has large surface area works best. I'm just cutting a 55 gallon barrel in half length wise and drilling some holes in the bottom to drain. Slap a lid on em' w/ air holes and its good to go.
Generally red wiggelers are used for worm composting because they will travel all around in the bin, while earthworms create deep vertical tunnels that they habitiually live in. Earthworms might work in a deep container but I'm not sure, never tried em'.

As far as bedding goes, I'm sure garden soil works since they live in it naturally. I put shredded newspaper (or leaves), mixed in with strips of torn cardboard. I add crushed egg shells for the grit the worms require to grind up the food. The red wigglers will eat the food scraps you put in but they will also eat the bedding quite quickly. This has two benefits, 1)more waste product is turned into fertilizer w/ a waste product bedding, 2) If you happen to forget to add food scraps for a while or go on vacation, the worms can still thrive on the bedding alone.
Cheers and good luck w/ the worms, there's really not much to it, just keep them moist enough w/ out drowning them and they do their own thing. Its so satisfying to start out with just a bunch of torn up paper and leaves and watch it turn into awesome fertilizer.

Man, I almost forgot I started this thread

I have left my worms with just watering them and feeding them every day, and I think that there all dead , it smells horrible. So I am going to throw those out.

Worm farming is not for a bed room anyways. lol

I was wondering if I can just do them in news paper like you said, that would be much better.

I was wondering if I can have the worms in my grow bed directly, I have pea pebbles in my grow bed, if I feed them, would they survive/reproduce/make castings?

Or in order to have them in my grow bed I need to make a sand layer or something?

I’ve got a lot of questions about Vermicomposting, and worms. Fell free to pm me if you want, but I would just post it up, so you can get a higher rank.

Thank you for your time.

-df

DF,
Many of us have worms in our growbeds to help break down solid wastes. I put 100 red wrigglers in my growbeds perhaps 6 months ago. I catch glimpses of them when I dig in the gravel, or sometimes they come up to nibble on clumps of poo where the distribution pipe deposits it. I have 3/8" pea gravel and the worms are fine with that. I did find that if I place pots of soil for seedlings on top of the gravel beds, the worms quickly migrate to that environment. So while they do fine in gravel, perhaps they prefer the soil. I do see a variety of sizes of worms, so I guess they are reproducing.

The red wrigglers seem small to use as a fishing worm, but they are a great composter. I was going to put some night crawlers in, but decided against that on the advice that, as one might guess from their name, they go walk-about at night. My system in indoors--I don't want worms on the floor.

DF - a lot of us have composting worms directly in our gravel beds. They feed off fish poo and old roots. They will never be in the desity they are in a worm farm - but they breed well and do a great job.

Ooops - that's what happens when you go off to wipe a kids bum.

Janet, did you happen to order your worms online? If so where, because the only worm I can get out here are night crawlers. Look at my thread for an up date.

Janet and VB, thank your for the advice and your time.

See what I am trying to do is make a small econ system, that provide extra nutrients (the worm castings, in the GB), and feed the fish (I was thinking about those mini snails) in an all-in-one system. Basically make a system to provide for itself.

So it is great to here that I can just put the worms into the gravel, and they wont drowned or any thing. It been something I was thinking about for awhile. I just need to order so red worms now.

Thank you

-df

The stinkyness of your first bin is probably caused by 1. Too much water 2. Too much food (if when you dumped your bin there were still live worms in it that is probably the case) or 3. Earth worms just can't live in small confined area like a 2 gal bucket. Worm bins don't necessarilly stink, I had one under my kitchen sink for a long time and it just smelled like rich damp soil. Carefully monitoring the bin so that it isn't too wet and all the food is being eaten before it rots will prevent bad smelling bins. Putting a towel under the holes on the bottom of the bin to collect any excess water (there shouldn't be much at all) and changing the towel regularly will help prevent bad smells too.

A simple test on water content in the bedding is to grab a handful of bedding and when you squeeze it (check for worms first)many drops of water should come out, but not a stream of water. Also, sometimes the bottom layers of bedding will become water logged while the top is dry, in that case, mixing the dry bedding to the bottom works well; thus creating a wider zone of the correct moisture for the worms.

It seems to me that adding worms to the gravel beds is a good idea, I plan to do that. To create a large excess of worms to feed the fish though, it seems that a vermicomposting bin with an abundant supply of food and good conditions would create more excess worms to feed the fish than worms in the gravel beds alone. Plus harvesting the excess worms would be easier in a bin than in heavy gravel.

Good luck with your system and keep us posted,

I looked up an online resource about vermicomposting that was quite handy when I started vermicomposting. It has great information, including harvesting techniques, reproduction cycles and rates and more.

I hope I'm creating this link correctly,
http://journeytoforever.org/compost_worm.html

if not, just cut and paste that into your address bar.

DF, I did order my red wrigglers online. I don't recall whether it was a site or eBay. Just do a search on compost worms and I'm sure you can find something in short order.

I agree that the beds are not the place to breed the worms for feeding to fish - but also think that worm growing for feeding to fish (other than as a treat) is a effort that does not have big favourable returns.

Night crawlers should be avaoided for the grow-beds - cos they will get up and leave at night.

there's an old saying that a wize old monk once told me.

"your not a vermiculturalist until you've lost a million worms".

i have found this to be true. persistence is the key to success. glad to see your trying again.

if your interested i have a foolproof worm bedding recipe.

50% washed coco peat. make sure its washed well to removed excess salts. coco peat is an ideal bedding for worms. it seems to buffer the beds really well.

25% composted manure

25% fresh manure

1 cup dolomite lime per 5l of bedding.

in summer you can add 50% composted. the fresh manure is to warm the bed in winter, to get the worms off to a good start. you can get them to breed in winter this way. if possible get organically certified manure or test your manure with a few worms to make sure it doesn't kill them. some manures contain chemicals that are harmful and can kill worms.

there are many ways to farm worms but i have found this the best. just need to find what works for you.

good luck.

would you mind elaborating on this?

the reason i ask is that i see them having huge favorable returns. perhaps i am going in a different direction to you.

when you consider the price of pellets (which is likely to only go up), the fact that up to 40% of the diet can be made up of worms, and the rate at which worms breed, i can't see why you think it wouldn't have favorable returns.

i'm not sure how the large companies make their pellets, but i assume its not sustainable long term. so in terms of long term sustainability, worms have big potential for future fish feed.

i am currently doing an experiment growing goldies with nothing but worms. so far the results are promising. a few of the smaller ones died, which i believe to be from either the cold weather, or the fact they were to small to eat the worms whole. the larger ones are doing very well however. they look more vibrant and colourful then ever. they are also growing at a good rate even through winter.

what i intend to do is breed the goldies, and feed them live directly to barra. i will also feed the barra with worms as well as pellets. hopefully i can halve the amount of pellets needed with the use of worms and goldies. imo this will add up in the long term. in the short term i would be better off selling the goldies and worms and spending the money on pellets. i feel however that the benefits of live foods will become more understood in time, as little research has been done into it for fish feed yet.

anyway enough of a rant. i would like to hear peoples criticism of the above. i may be completely off track. time will tell.

I can confirm that Barra do love both goldfish and worms.

My pet barra (for now) could easily eat 20 or more worms in on sitting. And the small goldfish last for less than a second in the tank. You drop them in and BANG... gone.

BF- Your idea to feed up smaller fish on worms is quite ingenius. Really closing the loop there. Do tilapia eat worms too? If you could expand your idea further by using a self sustaining supply of feeder fish, you can remove one of your inputs. It would be interesting to see which feeders grow the fastest.

No probs - will explain what I was getting at later on.