My worm bins

There's been such a big discussion lately about worms for fish I thought show you what I do for my worms. I primarily keep red wigglers and have two different containers for them. When you're looking for a storage container you want to either get something that's very tall and uncovered so that the worms can't crawl out or you're going to get something with a lid and you're going to need to provide aeration in it. I have two brief videos showing my bins and kind of explaining on how I set it up and what's in there.

FYI I talk about frogbit one of these, what I actually meant was large duckweed. Also the bark was cork bark and I also added sand (I had some substrate left over from a tank redo) . I will blame my covid stupor, lol .



Some photos

Do you use these worms to feed your fish? or are they for something else.

As I explained in the video I use the worms to feed my pavo eels, the Borneo eel and the wolf fish and accara. Sometimes the loaches in the 125 gallon run away with them as well.

So sorry, I did not watch your video. I often cruise the TFF when I am at work meetings that I am not really involved with and cannot watch videos.

Thank you for this thread as I am researching as to setting up a worm farm for wigglers. Also I am thankful that you included the mini reviews about Uncle Jim's as I had been looking there.

If you don't mind I have some questions...

As a rough estimate how large of a container would I need to maintain enough of a worm population to feed 4 small cichlids and an 8 inch rope fish? The rope, Clyde, mostly eats meal worms but will gobble down wigglers when he can find them before the cichlids. Since I live in a 1-bedroom apartment I sort of have to do this in one container.

Can the same container be used for both wigglers and meal worms. I figure that I'd add rolled oats to the compost for the meal worms. Currently I'm doing OK with my meal worms being in just a small container with a mix of saw dust, oats and bits of apple but it would be nice if I could combine things.

How do you keep the compost moist, just dump in water or a spray bottle? I was thinking a spray bottle such as the one I have in the image below. It has an adjustable nozzle so I can control the output. The plunger on top is to compress air to power the thing. I normally just use it to spray my cockatiel with the nozzle trimmed down to a mist. Hey, what can I say? He likes it. It seems to me that it could work well as it will put out a decent volume of water without making mud.

jaylach said:

Thank you for this thread as I am researching as to setting up a worm farm for wigglers. Also I am thankful that you included the mini reviews about Uncle Jim's as I had been looking there.

If you don't mind I have some questions...

As a rough estimate how large of a container would I need to maintain enough of a worm population to feed 4 small cichlids and an 8 inch rope fish? The rope, Clyde, mostly eats meal worms but will gobble down wigglers when he can find them before the cichlids. Since I live in a 1-bedroom apartment I sort of have to do this in one container.

Can the same container be used for both wigglers and meal worms. I figure that I'd add rolled oats to the compost for the meal worms. Currently I'm doing OK with my meal worms being in just a small container with a mix of saw dust, oats and bits of apple but it would be nice if I could combine things.

How do you keep the compost moist, just dump in water or a spray bottle? I was thinking a spray bottle such as the one I have in the image below. It has an adjustable nozzle so I can control the output. The plunger on top is to compress air to power the thing. I normally just use it to spray my cockatiel with the nozzle trimmed down to a mist. Hey, what can I say? He likes it. It seems to me that it could work well as it will put out a decent volume of water without making mud.

View attachment 305990

Click to expand...

I can't say anything about the mealworms as I haven't set up a bin for them but I don't think they will work in the same bin as mealworms like it dry.

Before I set up the 32 quart Sterlite Gasket container (was a little hard to find in a store, I went to four Dollar General stores before I could find one with a lid in stock and not broken) I was using the smaller container from Michael's (arts and crafts). I am unsure on it's size but it is in the scrapbooking area.
Use the smallest drill bit that you can find, I mean small, and make a set of small holes for aeration in the lid as well as a few on each side- but not too far down. Baby wigglers are small and if the holes are too big they will try to escape through them. Fortunately my drilled holes are very small.

As to the size for your needs, it would depend on how many worms per fish per day or week. I would recommend getting a bigger population of worms and letting them reproduce, that way you have some to feed while the others work on eating and multip

I haven't had a need to add any moisture to my worm bins as of yet and they have been set up since the middle of August. I mentioned that the blend I used for the substrate is a mix of fine coconut coir that came as a compressed brick. The moisture used to rehydrate the brick is what I added to the enclosure. Along with the coir I added larger coconut pieces, some sand, and some dirt...I mentioned potting soil but it's just top soil. Potting soil has additional items such as fertilizer that you don't want. I have been adding table scraps on occasion (vegetables only and I don't add onions or garlic) which I mince into as small bits as possible and mix into the upper half of the container.

So I don't mist the bins, but mine are in a slightly humid basement with multiple (+/-14) other fish tanks from 5-125 gallons. So it may depend on the humidity in your apartment (which is why you really need something with a gasket lid as the worms will get out otherwise).

***Sorry, my Sis just mentioned she just added some water to the bins. She just drizzled a bit or water (with Safe) and mixed it with the hand rake. You want it damp but not dripping.***

Lol on your mister, my male parakeet (Teetsa) loved being misted, sadly he passed a few years ago. His mate is still going strong at 11, and prefers to bathe in a bunch of wet parsley.

Thanks for the added info.

Not sure yet as to how many wigglers I'll go through in a week but 20 is probably a good guess.

To add on; the reason I don't have a good count on worm consumption is that my cichlids are not fully mature. May sound gross but I need to cut up the worms or the fish swim around for an hour with half a worm hanging out of their mouth. The largest of the 4 cichlids is an obvious dominant and sucks down the worms. The beastie can also handle a meal worm but it takes a little while for it to get it totally in.

As to the meal worms I'm just using a rather small Tupperware type container that does pretty well as to keeping up. Actually I often keep the container in my fridge to avoid ending up with nothing but beetles. Before starting this I had no clue that meal worms are just a larval stage for a beetle.

If I had a decent fish store here I would also do feeder guppies, as cruel as that may seem, for the rope and cichlids.

You may get a kick out of this. The tank I had way back when I lived in Ohio was a South American Cichlid tank except for my insistence on having a rope. My kid's friends (mid elementary school age) would go out in local fields to catch crickets to feed my fish... kids are so cruel but free food is free food!

My sister has 120 gallon tank with a Peruvian wolf fish. Her friend is the manager at a local fish store, and someone donated a bunch of swordtails because you know swordtails replicate like bunnies. So she gave my sister six of the ugly swordtails as feeder fish for the 120 gallon and of course the wolf fish ate them like little candies, two at a time-until there were none. We were both hoping that possibly they would make babies and we'd have a like a continuous supply of enrichment food for the wolf fish, but no the greedy Gus ate them all!

Boundava said:

My sister has 120 gallon tank with a Peruvian wolf fish. Her friend is the manager at a local fish store, and someone donated a bunch of swordtails because you know swordtails replicate like bunnies. So she gave my sister six of the ugly swordtails as feeder fish for the 120 gallon and of course the wolf fish ate them like little candies, two at a time-until there were none. We were both hoping that possibly they would make babies and we'd have a like a continuous supply of enrichment food for the wolf fish, but no the greedy Gus ate them all!

Click to expand...

Tank I had way back when in Ohio had as the mains a blue and yellow Acara. The blue was 5-6 inches and the yellow 3-4 inches. Fed them feeder gold fish along with the kid's crickets. Other cichlids also ate the feeder fish and crickets but were a bit messy about it as they were smaller and just took bites instead of eating the whole thingies.

Let's see... what was actually in that tank...
Blue acara
yellow acara
convicts
green terrors
Jack Dempsey
LOL! A rope fish

Ya, I know, Many may say that combination of fish can't get along in the same tank but they were all introduced at the same time with all fish probably under an inch in size. They just established their areas and tended to stay within their territory.

Redworms are great for larger fish or if you can handle chopping them up for smaller fish. I have become a fan of white worms. They are easy to culture, but require cooler temperatures than redworms as redworms do well at room temperature while white worms do best at 50-60°F. See Culturing White Worms.

jaylach said:

Thank you for this thread as I am researching as to setting up a worm farm for wigglers. Also I am thankful that you included the mini reviews about Uncle Jim's as I had been looking there.

If you don't mind I have some questions...

As a rough estimate how large of a container would I need to maintain enough of a worm population to feed 4 small cichlids and an 8 inch rope fish? The rope, Clyde, mostly eats meal worms but will gobble down wigglers when he can find them before the cichlids. Since I live in a 1-bedroom apartment I sort of have to do this in one container.

Can the same container be used for both wigglers and meal worms. I figure that I'd add rolled oats to the compost for the meal worms. Currently I'm doing OK with my meal worms being in just a small container with a mix of saw dust, oats and bits of apple but it would be nice if I could combine things.

How do you keep the compost moist, just dump in water or a spray bottle? I was thinking a spray bottle such as the one I have in the image below. It has an adjustable nozzle so I can control the output. The plunger on top is to compress air to power the thing. I normally just use it to spray my cockatiel with the nozzle trimmed down to a mist. Hey, what can I say? He likes it. It seems to me that it could work well as it will put out a decent volume of water without making mud.

View attachment 305990

Click to expand...

I wouldn't house mealworms and red wigglers in the same container. Mealworms live in dry bedding (and have mouthparts- I would guess they would eat the wigglers). I use 50% small pine animal bedding and 50% rolled oats. Add your mealworms and feed them with things like raw meat (I give them the scraps after meat processing) or vegetables and fruits such as apples, cucumbers, bananas, and celery. Remove any spoiled food. I wouldn't recommend feeding pumpkin. I am not sure about fish but the pumpkin gut-loaded mealworms gave my leopard geckos the runs lol. If you feed them like this they will start breeding. I have found that they like to lay their eggs on velcro or velvet-like material. When you see eggs on it remove it into a baggy and replace it so the baby mealworms don't get sifted out with the waste. To remove waste you can use a small sift. You will want to save sifted-out waste for a bit as it may contain eggs.