First, a mini education in starting an indoor worm bin, wormery, whatever one likes to call it, not by any means the only way but is how I have done it with success.
Lots of materials can be used for worm bedding. My favorite choice is shredded cardboard. Over the years I have done many things in trying to find a good, easy way to shred this stuff but short of having the right equipment I must honestly say there is no way I have found I would call good or easy! Good thing somebody has already done it and at the right price...
Found this product, "Natural Critter Care" in the pet isle at Walmart for a little over $5. Doesn't look like much but it's compressed and really fluffs up when water is added. It's nothing but pure shredded cardboard and a big plus, it's sanitized.
Now you can go and use peat moss that is acidic and needs adjustment or leaf mulch that may need it depending on the leaf species but make no mistake, any natural product one uses should be sanitized or at least pasteurized for use in an indoors wormery. The worms you purchase will provide the beneficial bacteria that will stabilize the bedding as far as the microbial war is concerned but you do not want to introduce any mite or otherwise pest eggs into the system at all if it can be helped and starting clean will most surely help. A thorough inspection of the livestock upon arrival should also take place to make sure there are no tiny pests, hard to find clean worms anywhere and I'm hoping for a good shipment. If there are pests we will deal with it.
Shredded cardboard is the perfect bedding in my experience. The worms will eat it all by itself as a feed source and it won't compact like many paper based beddings.
So I've used twelve packed cups of dry bedding and added about four cups dechlorinated tap water which is important. Chlorine over time will kill beneficial microbes in the bedding which is a main source of nutrients for the worms. Our city water contains small trace amounts of chlorine which is easily evaporated out by leaving the lid off a container for 24 hours. Other water sources may contain other chemicals. When in doubt use rain water or bottled or otherwise purified, non-chlorinated water at all times in the worm bed.
Four cups water to six cups packed bedding hydrates perfectly for worms. You want to test this by squeezing a handful hard and just getting a few drops of water out. Maintain this bedding hydration at all times for a healthy wormery. Too wet will cause anaerobic conditions, resulting in worm mass exodus, worm death, foul odors, killing beneficial bacteria and attracts pests. Too dry will of course cause the worms to dry out. Proper hydration is the key to a successful wormery.
My prototype Clean Bug System wormery container is a plastic bin, washed with soap to remove any manufacturing oil residue from the molding process and then wiped out with alcohol just to be sure and allowed to dry. The bedding is hydrated and fluffed up by rubbing it between my palms, so we have a couple to a few inches of bedding ready for worms.
Have some inquiries out to wire screen manufacturers to source different mesh sizes for my vision of the future Clean Bug System. For now and in hopes the mealworms I receive are at least small adult larvae, standard aluminum window screen will work.
Again from my local Walmart comes part of what was an adjustable window screen. It is made of two screens of the same size which slide apart for adjusting and are held together by some cheap plastic parts that come off easily. So I got two screen frames for about $5, a screen spline tool at about $3 and already had some aluminum screen in the garage to replace the fiberglass material in the screen frame I'm using since mealworms can chew right through that, or so I read. Not wanting to chance it so I'm using aluminum. Replacing a window screen is pretty easy and can be seen how on YouTube.
Actually picked up the screen first and then went to the plastic tub section and found the tub to fit the screen and went from there. I wanted the screen to at least cover the top edges of the tub to help prevent worm escape. The mealworm enclosure is a 3.5 inches tall wall of coroplast, fastened to the screen with a bead of silicone along the outer edge. The whole thing is setting inside an old wooden box I will put some powdered cellulose into the bottom just in case of escape. If the worms go into the powder it will coat them and they will not be able to climb out of the safety box...and if I can get to them in time, before they dry out, they can be put back into the wormery without harm.
This is pretty much a completed first prototype I know will keep frass from building up in the mealworm enclosure. Small bits of mealworm feed will also fall through and it will all be eaten by the worms and converted to valuable worm castings which have no foul odors. The future Clean Bug System for mealworms will have a few more upper layers with different mesh sizes to enclose various sizes of mealworms and will all stack neatly.
Notice I typed above, "to help prevent worm escape"? Worms are masters of escape and can likely squeeze right through that window screen if they want to but for now it is what I have to work with. Would like to have at least #20 or perhaps a bit smaller mesh for that layer in later prototypes, and will.
Keeping worms happy is the key to prevent escape, especially difficult to do in plastic enclosures with plastic lids. Condensation is the culprit in these cases when one opens the lid to find worms crawling up the sides and being all under the lid. Nightcrawler species of worms are moreso famous for this versus the red wiggler, E foetida, which most poeple use in indoor vermicomposting wormeries. I think having the screen bottom mealworm enclosure will prevent condensation on the sides and make escape harder for the worms, hopefully impossible. A daily or perhaps less frequent misting of the worm bedding should keep moisture levels good and the worms happy.
Another option to help prevent worm escape is leaving the light on in the room, if one should poke its head out somewhere. Not sure how light will affect mealworms as I have read varying opinions. If it's a problem, it will be easy to have a cover on the topmost container which will house the egg laying beetles and the rest of the lower layers will be shaded enough by screens.
All for now until the worms and mealworms arrive. See ya!
Looks really good, Charlie. The only thing you might run into [and it's just a guess]: the most environment that the worms require might lead to problems with humidity in the mealworms' home-turf.
ReplyDeleteAlso -- since I don't think you covered this but I might've missed it -- you might consider finding a simple way to remove the adult beetles. They might require a certain temperature in order to successfully breed that would conflict with the worm zone.
Again, I'm really just speculating here. I've had *very little* experience with insect farming, unfortunately. I highly recommend that you document everything you're doing, but it's likely that you'd thought of that already.
Thanks Dave. Yes I will keep an eye on possible moisture issues in the mealworm enclosure, had thought the same thing so we'll see how it goes.
ReplyDeleteAbout the beetles, I'm removing them as they pupate from larval stage. The mealworms surface and remain motionless for a day or two before shedding the last exoskeleton. I pick them out with a spoon and place them in a different screen bottom enclosure that won't be over a composting worm bin. There they will lay eggs which will fall through into a solid bottom larvae rearing bin until they get big enough to put into the Clean Bug System, at least for now until I figure mesh size needed for newly hatched larvae.
I notice even adult larvae mealworm's frass is very tiny and it would not take a very large mesh to make all the enclosures. I'm stuck with window screen for now until some better funding happens. Will do what I can until then.