Breeding Superworms

[boofeng]

I keep earthworms, but the way I culture take up quite a bit of space – I use the stairwell outside my flat, which is quite deserted ever since Lift Upgrading.

Basically, I use Ikea Samla bins, the black ones, with a loose fitting lid. Fill them up with shredded cardboard and paper from office. Go to the wet market around noon and ask for discarded veggies. Add some water, and then add worms. Wait. Because of the long wait, I have 4-5 bins going at any time. All of mine are full of rich black wormcast now, and I seldom harvest – they’re occasional treats for my dwarf pikes.

There will be issues with fruit flies for sure. You’ll get maggots in your compost bin, and adults flying around. It was an issue when I kept my bins indoors, and I've not found a way to solve it. The only way to exclude fruit flies is to design insect proof enclosures – which I do at a small scale for grindal worm cultures. If excluding insects, I will buy large containers with ‘airtight’ lids, then cut holes in them, and tape coffee filter paper over the holes in the lids. Coffee filter paper is much cheaper at Daiso than supermarkets.

Maintenance all about managing moisture, food, and population. I think each setup has its own equilibrium so you’ll have to find it on your own. But my worms seem to tolerate me not feeding or adding water for weeks on end, so they’re not hard to maintain at all. Just set up more bins so you’ll always have something to harvest.

I would be happy to give u a starter culture – lots of eggs and juvenile worms in there. But, I started with angmor composting worms – red wigglers, Eisenia fetida (foetida). And they are allegedly toxic – though I feed my fish without any problems. It’s better if you go with the LFS worms, which I think are Perionyx excavatus – Himalayan Blue Worms (Indian Blue Worms), etc.

Once in a while they will reach a critical mass and you’ll have a mass exodus on your hands. I don't look after my bins very often so often I see a bunch of dried up bodies around the bins. Last time I used to see them climbing out and harvest like 50-100 worms at a time.

Oh one more thing - to purge them before feeding, just keep them in a tupperware without any bedding, there'll be less shit in them when you feed. It's also possible to gutload I guess, but I've not tried it yet.

Good luck!

[vadriewyn]

It's awesome that you are able to use the space outside your house. The current new crop of BTO designs don't leave much walkway space for me to utilise.

My breeding programme has been quite okay, but its quite a hassle to keep having to manage the bedding and whatnot. The food also doesn't get consumed fast enough (or I just don't have the required beetle density) and requires constant swapping out before it starts to rot and decompose. I think I'm going to stop my SW farm since it's not as hassle free as I've hoped and, for it to be worth doing would mean I'll need to rotate between a few hundred beetles at any one time for it to be worth the effort (and then there's the static cost of bedding material).

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[vadriewyn]

Composting bins seem to be more hands off, but it'll still require a fair bit of DIY to get a proper setup (by which I mean having multi levels with a drain on the bottom to extract the tea). Otherwise, I'll still be faced with having to move the compost and worms from 1 bin to the next. Getting fresh vegetable scraps is also an issue for me since I don't really do any marketing.

Looks like the LFS will still get to bleed my money every so often. Haha.

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[exotic_idiot]

Maybe breeding crickets will be a better option?

Few days ago my fil was watching a channel abt substain food source.
Thailand, vietnam ppl was eating insects as source of food.
See their crickets farm like very easy to setup.

[yoAro]

Originally Posted by exotic_idiot

Maybe breeding crickets will be a better option?

Few days ago my fil was watching a channel abt substain food source.
Thailand, vietnam ppl was eating insects as source of food.
See their crickets farm like very easy to setup.

Its true and i have tried it before. Just use a 2 or 3 ft fish tank, place a tray of soil and feed them with cheapo pellet food with some moisture..
The down side are the noise and some tiny bugs which grow along with them, although harmless but see already still quite uncomfortable.

[onlyyouknow]

Originally Posted by exotic_idiot

Maybe breeding crickets will be a better option?

Few days ago my fil was watching a channel abt substain food source.
Thailand, vietnam ppl was eating insects as source of food.
See their crickets farm like very easy to setup.

I think it's easy but can you tahan the noise? Lol

[exotic_idiot]

Originally Posted by yoAro

Its true and i have tried it before. Just use a 2 or 3 ft fish tank, place a tray of soil and feed them with cheapo pellet food with some moisture..
The down side are the noise and some tiny bugs which grow along with them, although harmless but see already still quite uncomfortable.

Best low maintence... high in protein for fish growth

Originally Posted by onlyyouknow

I think it's easy but can you tahan the noise? Lol

I never try before. Also dun think my wife will let me keep...
She scare of creppy crawlers haha

[boofeng]

Originally Posted by vadriewyn

It's awesome that you are able to use the space outside your house. The current new crop of BTO designs don't leave much walkway space for me to utilise.

My breeding programme has been quite okay, but its quite a hassle to keep having to manage the bedding and whatnot. The food also doesn't get consumed fast enough (or I just don't have the required beetle density) and requires constant swapping out before it starts to rot and decompose. I think I'm going to stop my SW farm since it's not as hassle free as I've hoped and, for it to be worth doing would mean I'll need to rotate between a few hundred beetles at any one time for it to be worth the effort (and then there's the static cost of bedding material).

Originally Posted by vadriewyn

Composting bins seem to be more hands off, but it'll still require a fair bit of DIY to get a proper setup (by which I mean having multi levels with a drain on the bottom to extract the tea). Otherwise, I'll still be faced with having to move the compost and worms from 1 bin to the next. Getting fresh vegetable scraps is also an issue for me since I don't really do any marketing.

Looks like the LFS will still get to bleed my money every so often. Haha.

Yeah I’m lucky to have some space and cool family/neighbours. Even then, harvesting and cleaning and purging worms is quite a hassle. I’m still undecided on live food culturing. It’s rather fun, but I have to move to a simpler workflow or I’ll give up on them in the long run, I think.

Actually my worms do quite well even when I neglect them for weeks – which shows they don’t need fresh greens. This guy who collected worms from me mentioned the worms obtain nitrogen (aka protein) by grazing on nitrogen fixing microbes which thrive in the bedding. Which makes sense. So just give them carbon waste (i.e. paper & cardboard) – and let the microbes sort it out.

I still think the main challenge in earthworms is 1) flies, 2) smell, 3)space – if you can live with those, feeding and moisture isn’t that critical. I think it’s a little idealistic to hope that proper housing (a good bin design), proper feeding, and proper watering will ensure there’s never smells or flies. These systems tend to boom and crash. It’s crazy.

That said – SW looks even crazier. Crickets too. (Kudos to you all for trying - if anyone finds an easy way to do it, please document! Thanks! )

Hmm. Do you have a community garden near your estate? Maybe you can talk to them (the RC I think) and get some space to do a compost heap. Those are worm magnets. And the gardeners will be happy to contribute plant waste. And collect your worm castings. Synergetic.

All in all, I think if live foods are readily available from your LFS at a reasonable price (and SW and crickets are both quite cheap), buying is far easier than self-culturing.

[presario316]

Earth worms dont need fresh greens. You will have to judge by yourself how much the worms can consume in between your feed. that way, the foul smell of rotten food can be reduced.
Another way is to bury the 'food' (if you are feeding kitchen scrap such as rotten fruits etc) under the compost so that no 'food' is exposed.