HELP! Worms moving under my tray

I know there is a ton of knowledge on this forum so hopefully some one can help me. Friday my worm bin arrived. Saturday I filled it with bedding (coco coir) some soil . Saturday afternoon I put the worms in (approx 500) and covered with some bedding plus damp shredded newspaper. Sunday I put some kitchen scraps in corner.This morning I looked and was wondering where the worms were!! Somehow something seemed wrong and I lifted the bottom tray and low and behold most of the worms are living under the food tray and on top of the weed-barrier cloth. They should not be there. That stuff is not too strong I would guess. What's wrong?? too wet, too dry, shock???? Any ideas?
Thanks for help. Coby

Is any body out there??? Has any of you had this too? Any ideas or suggestions would really help.
Hope all are well, I know there is some bad weather all over Atlanta.
Thank you.

Hi TulipLady-did you thoroughly wet the first bedding? Worms need it almost soggy. Were they able to get out of the light? Is it a comfortable temp in their room? I know when worms are in a new place they don't settle right in, so they must 'think' that under the food tray is more agreeable. Also, it takes a little while for food to spoil enough for the worms to start munching, maybe they are looking for food?
All just guesses, hope something helps,
Julia

I saw on the news you guys are getting flooded. Wish we could get some of that! It's supposed to be in the 100's tomorrow!

Hi Julia,
Yea Atlanta is pretty badly hit by rain. I'm in Dunwoody. Still have power, streets are fairly normal again but small creek behind our house (and backyard) is a small river at the moment and a wild one at that! No flood is our house but I'm sure a few houses or basements are not ok.

Temp. in basement is 22 or 23 C° (mid 60F°). Bedding was not soggy but pretty damp, no light on unless I go there to look. Food in one corner is indeed not composted yet. The bin is a gusanito with 3 trays and comes with white thin weed-barrier cloth. Allows air to go in and out but no insects (flies etc.) why the worms would go underneath I do not know. Do you use regular tap water or special water from bottle? I hate for them to die!

I use tap water, but we are on a well, so our water has more iron then the average. They don't seem to mind. I think they like it a little warmer, not positive on that though. Do you know what kind of bedding mix they were raised in? They will take a while to re-adjust to a new type, but any babies hatched there will thrive much better. Maybe they just don't like all the thunder from the storms:>)

Julia, when you say :"they take a while" to adjust. How long is a while? Right now I just picked up about 10 worms again.
I gave them a little extra food: mushed up green beans and fruit (quite pulpy). They seem to be escaping from in between the cloth layer and the bin. I don't even know how that is possible. The cloth is quite tight now. I'm just worried.
They came in small cannisters with what seemed like peat moss. But from the fridge! but very lively and healthy looking. I just them in my bin with their stuff. Just how wet do I make it? You don't want to drown them, right?
I sprayed it again (with bottled water!) and seems very nice and wet to me.

I think it may take a couple of days before they get adjusted to the new environment. Does it seem like the exodus is slowing down?
You want the bedding to be like a wrung out sponge, or like a soaked paper towel that you squeezed out. There is probably a way for your worm bin to drain out any extra liquid, so don't be afraid you will drown them. It is worse to keep them too dry. The pulpy food is good, it will be easier for them to get into. And it will add moisture.
This is a picture of my first 'finished' worm bin. It might help to see how 'muddy' it looks after they have eaten everything. Worms do like it a bit mucky!

Yes, to be honest the exodus does seem to be slowing down. I did however change the cloth on top of food tray, I tucked in the long edges and was able to pull it more snug under the roof. For the cloth underneath the food tray I need a 2nd person, food tray quite heavy and had a lot of worms hanging from it. So I'll have to wait for "helper" (usually my DH !!)
I did feed them more tonight, 1 lb of mushed beans, fruit and some melon with rind. Maybe that helped. I''ll look tomorrow. I did get email back from the Wormwrangler (who sell the Gusanito bin) and according to her the temp. was good, but hunger could be a reason they try and go out to get food. Moisture seems fine too. Very damp but not soggy dripping.
sigh.... I thought having 1 teenager (daughter) was tiring.... checking on 500 "babies" few times a day is no slouch either! I'll be more relaxed when I see they are eating the stuff and are happy.
Thanks for time and advise- it did help. You throw some straw in your bedding I guess?

Don't worry, these little babies will go from 'diapers' to independent MUCH faster! But I know what you mean, I raised one of those (daughters) myself. Of course now I wish she hadn't grown so fast! Sigh.
Yes, when I started I added the straw as insulation-I live in an area that gets over 100 degrees. So I put about six inches on top and soaked it. It acted like the pads in a swamp cooler, cooling the air and so cooling the worms. Of course eventually it broke down and became part of their mix. That pic is from my learning days-lots of sand in the mix. But the worms came from my sisters garden, and I wanted them to 'feel at home'. I guess it didn't hurt:>) Now I use a mix of poo from my 'pet' pot belly pig (unsociable fellow, but he keeps the garden growing (grin)) and the straw and hay pieces that are left after a couple of months of feeding. Basically, I clean the pen, compost it to keep it from getting hot in the bin, and then feed the worms. But it's taken over a year to 'perfect' that system. A lot of livin' and learnin'.
I can't believe I don't have any good pics of my poo supplier! This one will have to do. There is also a little pygmy goat, but I gave up trying to collect her little pellets! But she goes jogging with me and the dogs, so she has entertainment value!
I hope you are coming through all that bad weather ok-is there still a danger of flooding?

LOL that is so cute!
A few Houdini's this morning. Although I see no more worms hanging under the lowest (water collection) tray. so the few on the ground are hopefully the last.
As soon as I can arrange a helper I will fold in that cloth on lower tray too, just as I did with upper. You can tighten it really well then and worms cannot get out. I will get another tray ready soon, with lots of food already to start, put it on top, the theory is that the worms should move upwards then and you can empty the lower tray (composted).
I just hope I'm not killing them!

If you can take a pic of your setup it would be easier to see what things look like. I've never tried the layered towers, I don't know if the worms will leave the lower bed before it's finished or not. Maybe someone who has done it that way before can give us some advice on that. But is sounds like everything is fine:>)

This seems so complicated---I just put mine in a tote with a lid and a lot of newspaper---mine are inside so I don't have the worry about heat---nothing happened for a long time---and food did not disappear overnight----now I just throw stuff in every few days---once I had decided I had killed them all but when I checked they were all there---they hide well---I go a week without checking on them and I had to start composting cause no way they could eat all my scraps---maybe I just need more worms---you need to relax a bit they will probably get the knack soon. Good luck!!! And try to stay dry.

I want to make worm tea---for my orchids---not sure how to separate worms from compost---don't want to hand pick each one out---

aspottfortea,
here's picture of my worm bin. It's not so complicated ay you think. The bins are quite easy, escpecially for sorting the castings.
Did you read the "Worms eat my garbage" ?by Mary Appelhof. EXCELLENT book. Very handy; explains the whole works INCLUDING how to do the sorting. With a bin like mine, you basically make a new tray with fresh bedding and food after tray one has been eaten and put it on top of it, all the worms go up to where the food is! You are then left with a tray with good worm castings and an occasional worm may be. But all the worms are in upper tray. I have a 3-tray bin so I can put twice a tray on top of my starter tray. The yellow bucket you see hanging on the spigot is for moisture /water coming out of the bin. But I haven't had that yet. I still wonder how wet or soggy does it needs to be?
Well, I have no escapees anymore and since they are still moving I guess they are settling in. I'm just surprised that I can still see much of the food. Maybe I have too much garbage or too few worms! A few items get white moldy now too? should I remove that?
Mine are indoors too. The basement closet has an average temp of 21C° (about 60F°).

aspottfortea-you can make worm tea just by pouring a gallon of water into your tote and catching the water that drains out the bottom in a pail, like TulipLady will. Or you can take the tote outside and leave the lid off, and as the very top layer dries out you can scrape it off and put it in a bucket with water.( The worms will go down into darker, wetter regions, so you won't be taking them with the mix) Stir it around and then let it settle a bit, and pour out your good worm tea.
TulipLady-they say a pound of worms will eat a half-pound of food each day, so that should help you decide when you might have too much food in there. I wouldn't take out the moldy stuff, it is just getting better for the worms, I believe. And there is a thread ( I think it is in the Soil and Composting forum) about just digging your kitchen scraps directly into your garden, so that it is constantly working into the soil. Here it is, I found it.
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1039554/

TulipLady,your thread reminded me of a funny story, or maybe not so funny. I started my worm culture back in the 60's from a neighbor's leaf pile. I needed a food source for a graduate project I was doing with native fish. I had over 20 aquariums of various sizes and I couldn't afford to buy food to feed my collections, so I started raising red wigglers as fish food. My original bins were made of wood, and I placed them on a wood floor in an upstairs room in the appartment I was renting at the time. One day the landlady snuck in and found the worm bins on the floor, and when she moved the bins there were hundreds of worms underneath. Needless to say I bought her a new wood floor.

Anyway, the reason for the problem was that I was covering the surface of these bins with a thick layer of wet news paper so I could easily harvest the worms from the surface of the media. The newspaper idea worked well, and I even discovered some grindel worms growing in my media. These very tiny white worms could also be harvested by placing a piece of glass over the wet newspaper, and a black piece of plastic over the top of the glass. I simply lifted the glass covers each day and immersed them in the various fish tanks. My fishes much preffered the grindals over the red wigglers.

Point being, anytime you place a covering on the surface of the worm bin, the worms will move underneath this cover. And yes, they will also move out of the bin under certain conditions, like the media being a little too wet. The only covers I use today on my bins are 1/4-inch mesh screens to keep PK the cat from using the bins as her potty box. I also have a flourscent light fixture about four inches above the four bins as well to keep the worms in place, but occasionally some still do wander. Only this time they have a concrete floor to deal with.

m

Hi MRaider3,
Meanwhile my worms were indeed too wet I think, my husband had given them some water and food while I was gone, meanwhile I have the 2nd tray ontop of first. The first has had no more food since 3 weeks ago and now they are slowly moving up! So the first bin should be nothing but good compost. I've seen lots of tiny eedy bitsy worms already! So I guess they are happy. The bin is standing in pur basement furnace closet but has large open area which is crawl space. I might move them in basement itself, it's a little warmer. Approx. 59 - 61 F°
It does take alittle time getting used to.
I had to laugh at yr story though. I guess that landlady now has it stipulated in the rental contracts ;no worms or other creatures in flat! lol

Well TulipLady, I think the landlady by now is sleeping with the worms. One thing I learned from a pretty knowledgeable DGer is that if you give your worms plenty to eat they will reproduce rather quickly. I was of the belief that the trigger was the extra moisture since I emulsify my food scraps before feeding them to the worms. When my media is on the dry side I get very little worm production. Since I feed the newer, smaller worms to my fish, I feed one particular bin heavlly and get the moisture content up to the point of 'smelly'. There are two ways I combat smelly: (1) By adding some cheap vanilla (large bottle from Costco) to the emulsified mix; (2) by adding about 10 percent new media (peatmoss soaked overnight and the excess water removed with a nylon aquarium net). I prefer the latter.

If your worms are laying egg capsules its a good sign you are doing okay.Temperature should be fine, however I don't know anything about your tray system. If the bottom tray is laying flat on concrete, it might be better to place an old rug underneath the bottom tray. Don't be surprised to find worms under the rug if the moisture content of the media is a bit too wet. Rule of thumb is you should be able to squeeze just a very small amount of water out of your media. Takes time to get the feel of it, but that is why I like peat moss. After years of working with peat moss as I media I can read it like a Gypsy reads tea leaves. Also, works for peat pots for my seedlings which I purchase by the gross. You will find lots of negative comments on the use of peat pots for seedlings in DG. Personally I wouldn't use anything else.