I’m not sure if this thread should be in Gardening, Recycling or Home, so I stuck it here instead!  I am hoping to get a delivery of worms early next week from Wiggly Wigglers to start my Can O Worms wormery up again.  It’s not a very effective way of composting, I don’t think, but I thought it would be fun for the children (ok, fun for me!).  But ...............the last time I used this wormery, I seem to remember that the worms were always going down, into the sump and drowning.  Even if I left the tap open, the little blighters were always getting stuck and dying down there (they can officially get back up, but I don’t think they wanted to!).  I know I’m a bit soft, but I kind of felt sorry for them, especially on cold nights, in the wet, freezing sump!!  The folks in Wiggly Wigglers told me that this problem would settle down, but to my memory, it didn’t and I spent a lot of time hooking the worms out of the sump and putting them back in the compost again, which is time consuming and not very easy sometimes.  So .....................I was thinking, would there be any harm in putting some wood shavings in the sump, so that the worms have something to grip onto if they go into the sump, or is there a good way of stopping them getting in there in the first place.

This thread will obviously be gobbldy gook to anyone without wormery experience, but I’d love to hear from anyone who has encountered this problem and knows a way around it! 

No help I’m affraid but |I have been thinking of getting a wormery for ages and would love to know there where hows whats and the like of them in general! Which one? What can you and can’t you put in it? Do they smell at all? Can you put meat scraps in? I reacon Jake and I would have fun with one and it might compliment the compost bins if a wormery takes a wider range of food scraps.

I don’t think they can take anything that a normal composter can’t.  No meat scraps for example.  I used to put veggie peelings, newspaper (they especially love corrugated cardboard!), cotton and wool cloth etc, same things that would go in a compost system.  I didn’t find there was a smell at all (usual composty smell which I like) and they attracted lots of other wildlife in there too, ants (which isn’t great as the ants steal the worm eggs apparently), slugs, small spiders and fruit flies.  I found that they didn’t take enough of our household waste as the trays aren’t very big, my main reason for having one is for the children to see the worms, see what worms do and learn about them and other bugs too.  There are quite a few different types of wormery too, mine is a Can O Worms, but there are newer types now available I see.

I had a different brand of wormery but had a similar problem and didn’t find a solution to it. I found the whole thing problematic. I lost at least half of my worms at the beginning as they just escaped and diead so there were dead worms scattered about the place….not to mention the waste of money! I also found they could only cope with a small amount of waste at any one time - I guess we eat a lot veggies. Luckily we read a lot of newspapers too as I found the whole thing was often too wet which meant that drowning was an ever present threat even to the worms that didn’t get stuck in the sump! But I think it would be fun for the kids. Apparently over time they do manage to handle more stuff as they reproduce and bed in I guess. I’ll be interested to hear if anyone has a solution to your problem.

They go down in to the sump usually if the mix is a bit acidic in the higher layers so more cardboard or paper should be added to balance it. Haven’t had one for a while but going to buil one this year - same reasons, to let our daughter watch and learn how they do what they do.

I do have a solution if they are falling down the sump. Does your wormery piece of mesh that goes over the sump hole? If so and they are still going through that you could put a piece of really thin fabric over it such as a piece of thin tights - the liquild will still go through but the worms won’t. It may get a bit muddy around the hole over the tights but can be easily cleared away regularly.