Blog - Wood Worm Farms

Red Worms help to prevent Aquarium Fish Disease

Actually this story started pretty sad. On July 20th I decided to add two bluegills from a Yamaska Park lake to my aquarium. That was a bad idea. While I went on vacations on the last week of July, new fish, probably weakened by bad transportation conditions, got sick with fungus. The sickness spread to aquarium "veterans" and I lost 3 of them in 2 weeks. One of newcomers also gone. Desperate to stop the epidemic, I changed fish diet to pure red worms. This seems to help. Even one remaining bluegill eats the worms and is still alive, despite loosing its eye to fungus.
It's interesting, that by time of my absence all the cleaner mollusks disappeared from my main aquarium. Probably fish ate them in lack of good food.

Meeting Melissa Jordan from Wormpost Northeast

(Melissa Jordan - third from the left)

It's amazing to find out, that a virtual person, found in Internet by common hobby really exists. Nothing can replace a live person-to-person contact. I had some hesitations before this meeting with Melissa, but she exceeded all the expectations. It was a pleasure to meet a friendly WORM heart and speak about things we like.
Melissa Jordan is an owner of Wormpost Northeast.
She is 15 years in worm composting and I think, she has a great future.
Hopefully Wood Worm Farms will be a part of it.

Natural way to get rid of fruit flies - precomposted garss clippings

Since the grass clipping compost cooled down, I started to give it to worms. At the same time I put all the home compost to the outdoor bin. This strategy appears to help against fruit flies in my indoor worm bins. In approximately 4 weeks they almost completely disappeared. I think the reason for this is luck of suitable food. Also the healthy microbial population could inhibit growth of fruit flies larva.

New cardboard shredder

Here is a new cardboard shredder.
The old cardboard shredder stopped working after getting jammed once.
It worked very well before this, cutting thin and medium thickness cardboard. I claimed it's extended warranty right after the manufacturer's warranty expired... There is no repair service for those items. Let's hope it will be recycled.

Using wood chips as a compost bin

Worms in the wooden chips + grass clippings pile was for me the biggest composting surprise of the year.
Those piles prove to be an excellent shelter for worms in any season. If they are sufficiently large, they don't completely freeze in winter and don't overheat in summer.
The wood chips are not insulated from the ground. There is no fear that worms will run away: they usually stay close to food. My wood chip piles are pretty big - approximately 5m x 3m x 1.5m hight. Initially they were a mix of wood chips and fresh grass clippings. They staid one year like this, then the worms were added. One more year they multiplied there. Now I simply put some food scrap on top of the pile to lure the worms out.

Actually one could see the wood chip piles as a kind of 'mixed' wooden worm bins, where the compost is mixed with wood, instead being contained in it.

"Wild Eisenia Fetida" demistified

It seems like the idea of wild manure worms, that somehow got to a compost heap on the farm, was a mistake. Wytze Bos, a famous person sometimes making visits to the farm, told me the true story. Approximately 2 years ago his friend gave him a worm bin, that the fiend couldn't maintain anymore. Wytze passed the bin to Peter, responsible for compost then, and Peter simply dumped all the content in a huge compost heap. The heap was around 2m high and 5m wide and was made of grass clippings and wood chips. Such a big volume of compost remained warm even in winter and worms survived and multiplied. Later, the big heap was separated and moved to several other places, so the worms got to all the possible compost locations on the farm. Wytze's friend lives on West Island, and there is not so much worm distributors around here. So it's possible, that the worms originally came from Wood Worm Farms!

On the picture are the worms, "extracted" from from one of the heaps. The bait is coffee grounds.

Aquaponic system progress - 10 months

The aquaponic systems is still functional. I changed the bell siphons in growing beds, added a small aquarium to the system, in hope to keep there some small fish, replanted a new generation of water cress. For some reason water cress in one of the beds constantly dies. It seems like some harmful creature is hiding there. May be it's a peaceful Eisenia Fetida, that I released there to process solid fish waste?
Starting from approximately mid-March, fish shows extraordinary appetites. Luckily there was a chance to collect for them "wild" worms. Only one day this year... They grew significantly and seem to accept their role of home pets. They less get scared, bag for food, eat from hands. They finished all the collected worms in less then 2 months, eating as much as a 15cm nightcrawler for a fish a day!
With such a metabolism the inadequate growing bed got even more inadequate, so I change 4 gallons of water every week. I use rain water from my rain barrel.

Testing the ready compost - germination

Here are the first results. There is no big difference difference in germination for the both lots. In control lot 71 0f 72 germinated, in test lot 69 of 72 germinated. The ratio of germinated seed in compost to ones in empty medium is 97%, that is still normal.

Starting a worm bin

Here is a small video on how to start a new worm compost bin. For our wooden worm bins it's pretty simple, but could give some ideas.

Compost heap

This year started very fruitfully is sense of grass clippings. Mild winter and alternations of rain and sun created good conditions for grass. So I am back to my neighborhood compost collection. They go to a hot compost pile, and then to worms.

The compost pile of the previous year settled down and the compost is ready. It's also well mixed with underlying clay soil, probably by the action of earth worms, that I released there.
Here are two pictures of compost pile with a distance of almost a year.