A tub full of dead worms.

About two months ago I purchased some Dendrobaena earthworms from Worms Direct UK - worms for fishing, fishing bait, worms for bait, Dendrobaena for fishing, fishing bait wholesalers, I have kept them in a 4 litre tub with air holes in the fridge, I left them in the soil they were delivered in an have fed them some mashed potato, as I was instructed too by the website, I have also fed some coffee and milk powder as I read this on the Axolotl forum, the soil was also covered in leafs.

The worms were doing well and seemed to be multiplying if that is possible after a such short period of time, and my Axolotls eat them happily, I noticed in the past few days there numbers had greatly decreased, and today all remaining worms are dead, they all seem to have the same disease there bodies are normal until half way down when there bodies become thin elongated and limp.

I have ordered some more worms and have bloodworm in the meantime, but I would like to know what I have done wrong.

Thank you

The thing is that although this are a good culturing species ( i culture them too), they do need certain good conditions.
If you were keeping them in the fridge, in a small container and with food around, they probably died because conditions became severely wrong. I imagine in the fridge, even long term, bacterial, protozoan and fungal growth is heavily stunted, and since this is what the worms actually eat, they perhaps died surrounded by rotten food they couldn´t eat.

When you get the new batch, i would recommend placing them in a big tupperware (i use a 90l one), with decent aereation. Make sure to preapre the substrate a week before the worms arrive. Mix a small amount of vegetable scraps with lots of shreded cardboard, some soil and leaf litter. By the time the wors arrive, it should contain enough microlife to sustain them.

I have had some scapes and deaths in my culture, but they are reproducing and there´s still a good amount of them so i´m guessing it works just fine.

Thank you very much, I have no garden and am a bit cramped for space, I will use a bigger tub although 90l sounds excessive to me for example the worms I got half filled a half litre tub so there wasn't many of them! I was following the directions on the tub when I put them in fridge now I will keep at room temp

Once again thank you

Another thing to keep in mind is to go through your culture everyday or so and remove any dead worms. Dead worms will cause even more dead worms.