feeding in the middle?

[Alef]

The design of the wormery with the stacking trays is clever. Though I've been wondering about trying to put food in a middle tray? The advantage being that the top tray provides the constant wet paper to keep out flies. My only concern is that lifting in the middle exposes a lot of worms which are half way through the mesh and I don't want to squash them when I replace it! 

Alef

[wormcity]

Don't worry - worms are pretty robust
You would generally start with the bottom tray and then cover the food with the paper .....

[WillyWorm]

The problem with feeding in a middle tray is that you will very much increase the risk of your bin going anaerobic. Food can quickly start to rot due to the lack oxygen in the lower trays. 

Willy

[elleyfant]

I have tried this method. The thing is, I keep a stone on my lid (it keeps the plastic make-shift rain guard in place), so when the food layer fills up I was very conscious that I might be squashing out the air as WillyWorm said. Then, after a while, your wet paper starts to get slimy snd break down at which point that becomes food itself, so I reverted back to the standard feed on the top layer method. I didn't have any problems with it, just didn't seem the most sensible way after my trial.

[Lilwriggler]

Quick question about the corner feeding method which I employ. Had a bit of a mooch in my main feeding tray tonight and note the corners where I feed are rich in colour, damp and relatively shallow in depth. In the middle of the tray it is much drier, deeper and looks principally like the coir that went in at the first stage. Should I move a bit of the middle to the corners to encourage it to break down and increase the depth in those areas?

Thanks, I will always have questions and it is nice to see the forums active

[WillyWorm]

Hi yea I agree it’s nice to see the forum active. There is no reason why you can’t move the middle of the tray to the corners. The reason the corners are lower and a different colour is because this is the area where the worms work and feed this results in the bedding being broken down. Think of any animal, the amount of food eaten is always greater in volume than the waste expelled.
I found coir was slow to breakdown and have not used it for some time. There is no reason why you should not use some other bedding matirial in with the coir.

All the best
Willy