First time and probably last time

[Merlin66]

Hello!

Received a wormery as a leaving present. Received worms in post, all thriving and eagerly set up their new home. Put whole thing inside large bag so that at least if the worms did try to escape I could hopefully find any inside bag.

Every few days I'd take a look and see, yup, worms ok. Let them settle in first before getting them onto solids.

Last couple of days very warm and this morning was quite concerned as I knew its position was in direct sunlight so had to move it to a shadier place. Opened up top and what a smell and no worms to be seen! Dug around in compost thinking they might have migrated into the soil away from the top but nothing.

Took off the bedding tray to check the sump tray and oh my goodness, stinky worm soup.

So, all my worms have seemingly died. I'm not quite sure exactly what but here's what I think:

• We put too much garden soil with the coir soil?
  The shredded paper layer was too thick - it never dried out as a couple of times in this hot weather I did 'water' the paper a couple of times. So perhaps not enough air getting in?
  It was sited in the wrong place and became too hot.

What was all the liquid in the sump - where does this liquid come from?

Worms seem to have been quite active during the time they were alive as there was a lot of worm poo around.

Now I have an empty wormery and am thinking to get rid of it - it just seems too much effort to be honest and I don't want to have more worm deaths on my conscience!

I'd like to know what others think happened.. I had only had the wormery a week.

Thanks,

[WillyWorm]

Hi, what a sad, horrific experience. It sounds like the main problem you had was the heat. This is the only thing that will bring about mass death like this. Your worms will thrive at a temperature of 20/22 degrees, the same temperature that we like. If the temperature climbs to 40 degrees worms will die. It is important to keep worms out of direct sunlight.
It’s a shame things went so wrong because up to that point things were going so well.
The water in the sump is liquid which percolate down through the trays, some of it you have put in when watering the bedding and and some comes from the food we feed our herd (fruit and veg waste is 80% to 90% water). You should not allow your bin to get too wet, it needs to be as wet as a well wrung out sponge, if you take a handful of bedding and squeeze it if two or more drips of water is forced out then the bedding is too wet if one drip comes out it may be too wet. After the setting up very little if any water needs to be added.
Problems with bedding, too much soil or compacted paper, will inhibit the worms and slow down the maturing of the bin but will not kill off all of your worms over night. Even if your bin went totally anaerobic (without oxygen) your worms would have died over a number of days not overnight.
Sorry I can only think it was the heat that killed your worms.

To be a little positive!!! Try moving your bin to a cooler place and if there are any cocoons (worm eggs) mixed in bedding they can still hatch and will slowly restart your herd. Cocoons survive at high and lower temperatures that worms do. A sort of survival tactic put in place by nature to ensure this species survive.
But the best way is to move the bin and get some more worms.

If we can help just shout
Willy

[wormcity]

As Willy said - too hot

Send me an email/pm and I will post some more worms out to get you restarted.
If the coir/compost that is in there at the moment is really smelly, remove it and add some old used garden compost (3-4 inches) then add the fresh worms

Keep the wormery out of the sun preferably on a north facing wall
Don't give up yet!