Culture 'crash'

[tomkeogh]

My small earthworm culture has been running well for about four months, however, the past 5 mornings I have woken up to several escapees and I am a little stumped as to why.

My set up is as follows, a 15 litre bucket with DB worms, The bedding consists of shredded paper and egg crates, compost, leaf litter and vegetable scraps usually carrot, sweet potato and peas as well as any egg shells I have, some milk powder and coffee beans , I constantly add more cardboard and paper to regulate moisture, add some vegetable scraps once a week and aerate often.

Nothing has changed with my method of maintenance or materials used, but I would say the density of worms seems a little larger recently and the bedding is perhaps a little more moist than usual, although it is certainly not 'wet', 'soggy' or muddy and there is plenty of absorbent material in there.

The culture is kept indoors but in cool dark conditions, I regularly check for dead worms.

My plan of action is to move the culture to a larger container and perhaps add some aquarium sand I have laying about to help with moisture.

Please advise me of any problem I may be overlooking the sheer number of worms trying to escape every night suggests there is a major problem but I just don't know what.

Thank you in advance for any advice

 

[Azhael]

You add every egg shell you have left?? That´s not good. You need to be careful with the amount of calcium, an excess is a serious problem.

 

[tomkeogh]

Yes, but I don't eat many eggs maybe 2 or 3 a week

 

[Azhael]

That´s still too much, specially if your culture is not large.

So that you make an idea, i only added two egg shells and some calcium powder to my culture which is in a 90l container.

I would recommend taking some of the substrate out or as much egg shell as you can find, and add new substrate. Also, is there decent ventilation? If humidity gets too high, they tend to scape in mass.

 

[tomkeogh]

Thank you, I have just bought a little compost bin about 50l capacity, added some more substrate, hopefully all will be better now

 

[pete]

It is normal for worms come out of the soil at night, hence the name "nightcrawler". How much they do this depends on the species. In my experience, mature worms do this more than young ones, and denser cultures more than sparser. I'm sure that the worm bedding/food conditions would have an effect, too. The only way to really avoid it that I've found is to keep a secure lid on the bin.

 

[tomkeogh]

Cheers Pete, I am sure however that this is due to some kind of problem as it has been a mass evacuation not just a few worms climbing the bin but literally every single worm trying to escape.

Everything seems fine in the new bin with new substrate