🩺 Troubleshooting Your Worm Bin 💊
If you're noticing a bad smell, weird color/ behavior or physical defect coming from your worms there are a few steps you can take.
Bad Smells
Bad smells coming from your worm bin are rare, but are often a sign that you've overfed your worms and the bin is full of nitrogen-rich material that's attracting anaerobic conditions. You can usually confirm this if you see worms crawling up the bin trying to escape or if you have a PH tester and the soil is very acidic. The smell of ammonia in particular is a sign that your worms require intervention and you should add more bedding and carbon rich materials as well as more water to balance it out.
If the bin smells a little like Sulfur, it's likely that the bottom of the bin is drowning with water and oxygen isn't able to work its way through. Drain the bottom of the bin and let it dry out from the top or flip the contents of the bin if possible.
Worms Leaving
Worms moving from the soil they're buried in is highly unlikely especially with compost worms, but if it does happen it's typically because the soil has become too wet and they're drowning or they've run out of food and are attempting to find soil with better conditions and food supply.
Add more bedding and a little more food to settle the worms back in as it dries out at the top. Make sure to drain excess worm tea from the bottom of your bin.
Pests and Predators
If your worm bin maintains perfect conditions for worms it should be very difficult for other colonies of insects to compete and take hold. Ants for instance, can't survive the wet conditions of a worm bin so moving in should not be in an option for them. If you're noticing fruit flies, that means there's a gap in your worm bin attracting them to the food, find it and seal it.
Worms Resemble A String Of Pearls
If you notice a worm or two that have a beaded appearance similar to a string of pearls, this is a classic sign of protein poisoning. What you're typically looking at is the result of gasses building up within the worm and then rupturing the digestive tract in different places.
It's typically caused by overfeeding, especially protein-rich and calcium-deficient material which breaks down and ferments inside of the worms. This can also sometimes happen when worms lack grit in their food so they can't break down food as fast as expected.
If you believe your worms have protein poisoning, you can aid them in 3 steps:
- Remove uneaten food from the bin
- Mix in new bedding and add a fresh layer of bedding on top
- Water down the bin and keep watch to see if the colony starts to recover
If the poisoning continues to get worse, you may need to sift the worms out and place them into a new bin with better conditions for the time being until you can find the source of poison in the first bin.