Worms falling out from Waste Buster

[pcgf]

Worms have been falling out from the bottom of the waste buster wormery & most of them that fall out into the tray crawl out & about on the garage floor only to be discovered by myself in the morning that they've dried up & died. After reading the manual when I first received the wormery I decided to put some sheets of card/paper so that the bedding doesn't just fall through the wormery, but somehow I still manage to find worms on the floor.

Any suggestions/advice would be appreciated.

[NigelB]

Hi pcgf
If you could tell me how long the Waste Buster has been established, the depth of compost/feed material and what you have been adding as waste and whether this material is dry or damp? we will do our best to solve the problem.

Regards, Nigel

[pcgf]

Wormery has only been set up for over 2 weeks now. Depth of compost is about 10cm or so with shredded office paper.
Materials added so far have been some mint leaves, banana skins, mango skin. Shredded paper has been sprayed with bottled mineral water, full mist 3 or 4 squirts of the trigger & same again on the surface. I did transfer the contents of the wormey back out as I used tap water to moisten the unit & added egg shells which I thought created anaerobic environment, the smell was mild, but I didn't want to take the risk, so reset the wormery again. Wormery has 2.3kg of worms, probably less now.

[NigelB]

Was the Waste Buster supplied by us (Worms Direct)?

[pcgf]

nope, from www.recycleworks.co.uk

[NigelB]

No problem, the only reason for asking is to find out what worm and bedding were supplied with the Waste Buster. The Waste Buster is usually supplied complete with a kit consisting of worms and bedding, knowing which kit was supplied (if it was!) would help in trying to identify the problem, could you describe the kit that was supplied?

[pcgf]

The bedding with .33kg worms arrived in a white tub with holes in the lid, ordered indirectly from wormsdirect. The wormery was delivered from recycleworks, but the worms were delivered from wormsdirect, which I didn't notice until I read the invoice & after reading Composting with worms, why waste your waste? by George Pilkington I decided to buy 2kg of tiger worms to add the the wormery to get a good head start before winter.

[NigelB]

Ok, first a bit of background to the Waste Buster, it was designed by George who also wrote the book, George is one of the foremost authorities on worm composting in the UK, having designed the WB he approached Worms Direct as he needed to be able to supply a "worm and bedding kit" on a long term and consistent basis for the WB, we came up with the goods! and have been the official supplier of the worm and bedding kits for the WB since its launch.
The species, mix and weight of worms along with the unique bedding and quantity are specifically supplied for each WB model, this is really a starter population, it is designed to allow them to breed up to the maximum population the WB can support, around 2kg (depending on WB model) if you try to start off with anything approaching the maximum population, the worms will feel overcrowded and tend to disperse, the bedding amount originally supplied will not support a much greater popultaion than the .33kg even if you bulk it up with "artificial" bedding such as paper, cardboard etc it you will not force them to settle, I am certain this is why you are having this problem.

How to solve it.
This not going to be easy! you will have to try and return it back to the original starting point ie. around .33kg of worms and the 20 litres of bedding supplied, a lot of the surplus worms are going to have to be removed, the food materials added have been fine. All wormeries are slow to establish, by far the greatest problem is overfeedingby the owner, further information can be found on our website in the advice sheets under the worm composting section, I hope this helps in solving your problem.

[pcgf]

I've learnt my lesson, always read the manual. Thanks for the great help NigelB, really appreciate it.