Worms!

[Sylvia Bernstein]

There has been some (much?) chatter on other AP forums about using redworms in your media beds to "process" your solids.  I love this idea!  Not only are the solids removed, but the plants benefit from the vermicompost.  I added about a pound of worms in my six beds a few weeks ago, and I'm hoping that they are happily going to town in there.

So here are my questions...

Do you use worms in your system?  How many to use per square ft of bed?  When do you add?  Do you feed them something (food scraps) besides the delicious fish solids?  

[TCLynx]

Nate, I think worms could work in your towers. It would probably take a bit of an extra step on either side of the process. You probably would have to introduce a hand full of worms to the media when you hang a freshly planted tower.
And then when you pull down a tower and remove the media, I would suggest laying out the media on top of a worm collecting tray of some sort to let it dry out. Make sure the worm collecting tray has a layer of something moist and food for the worms and they will migrate down out of the filter media as it drys out. Figuring out how exactly to arrange the media above the collecting tray so that the tray will stay moist but the media can dry out will be the trick. I don't know how much that media when full of old roots will wick moisture but you want to make sure the media is close enough to the good worm habitat for the worms to migrate. Worms will try to escape light so if the media is exposed to sun and the tray is deep enough to have a thick enough layer of moist bedding for the worms, hopefully they will get down under the bedding to escape the sun.

I bet flexing the dried media over the trays will provide a nice amount of worm food (old dead roots are a great source of worm food.) Shredded cardboard or leaves can work as worm bedding.
You would have a worm farm and a way to make use of the "waste" products from the towers (the old roots.) And a way to recycle your worms from one generation of towers to the next and I bet worm castings would make very good seedling starting media, or at least a good additive for a seed starting mix.

[M Cosmo]

I am not sure that all the kinds of worms are going to work. I read that there are many varieties in the home garden and that some like to go deeper and escape their containers. Some are not social and like to be alone. There are lots of resources on the web for Worms - I am using the Worm Factory.
http://www.naturesfootprintinc.com/index.html
I read of stories of folks gathering worms in their garden and they kept leaving the composters. Before you put a lot of effort into collecting them you should check out why certain kinds have the right habits for your specific situation.
http://www.findworms.com/page/how-to-compost-with-worms.html

[TCLynx]

probably worth a little checking but I doubt most people are going to put the worms they collect under a microscope to count segments and hairs to know the exact species so I would say, if you are not putting huge time and effort into collecting the local garden variety of worms, I'd say go for it.

You can buy composting worms if you want worms that are supposed to be the best for bins but they can be costly and don't really like very cold climates so might not do well in an outdoor system where it will freeze in winter (this might be a case where local worms will be better.)

Nightcrawlers like deep burrows and tend not to stay put in worm bins from the stories I hear from my mom about trying to breed fishing bait.

FYI for worm bins, there is no way to keep a worm in a bit it doesn't want to stay in, worms can easily squeeze through window screen. The trick is to make the bin appealing to the worms. Some types of worms are easier to keep in the bins than others. I've heard stories about worm farms raising a type of worms that likes to go exploring at night and them needing to keep bright lights on over the bins at night to keep from loosing their worms and the panic when the power went out one night and trying to get a generator to keep the lights on.

I think of worms much like I think of compost, don't stress too much over them, they are easy to care for. A little bedding, some food, and some moisture, all good. Leave them alone as much as possible.

[TCLynx]

And about when to add worms to a system... Well I added a hand full of composting worms along with about a hand full of castings to each of my grow beds as I started my system. I figured the castings would provide a good jump start with the beneficial bacteria. I cycled up the system without fish but I figured the worms would survive just fine on whatever leaves and organic matter was caught in the gravel as I put it in the grow beds. I was unable to keep leaves and stuff out of the mix as I washed my gravel. Perhaps if I was filling a new system with clay balls in a greenhouse, I might want to wait till the fish were in to provide worm food before adding the actual worms but I would still add some worm castings to the beds for the jump start on bacteria.

No, I've never specifically fed the worms in my AP system kitchen scraps or anything like that. There is more than enough food for them with the fish waste, old roots and leaves that get into my grow beds.

[k edmonds]

When this discussion started I had never thought to put worms in the system. I love to experiment so I added about a dozen red wigglers, have not seen any since they burrowed in. I am sure they are in there somewhere.
The neat thing is that my four-year old daughter likes to catch regular earth-worms in the soil garden and keep them in buckets etc. About two weeks ago she asked if she could add some worms to the fish tank so they could have a treat. I said sure, knowing that the gold fish would probably pass, I think she added 4-5 regular earth worms directly to the tank. Tonight I cleaned the filter on the pump and when I took the cover off there were two of these regular earth worms on the inside of the case next to the filter. I laid them on the gravel bed while I cleaned the filter and by the time I got back three minutes later they had already burrowed into the gravel. I never would have guessed that regular earthworms could live in water for a couple of weeks, apparently they found a place that was hospitable.
I have also been adding some worm bin leach-ate every few days. I'm not sure if its the worm juice or the system is starting to get into the "zone" but the plants have really perked up and the seedlings have just exploded in the last couple of days.

[Murray Hallam]

Worms are the Aquaponics secret weapon that is for sure.
I actually add food scraps to the grow beds using a worm feeding station in the corner of the grow bed. Works very well.

k edmonds said:

When this discussion started I had never thought to put worms in the system. I love to experiment so I added about a dozen red wigglers, have not seen any since they burrowed in. I am sure they are in there somewhere.
The neat thing is that my four-year old daughter likes to catch regular earth-worms in the soil garden and keep them in buckets etc. About two weeks ago she asked if she could add some worms to the fish tank so they could have a treat. I said sure, knowing that the gold fish would probably pass, I think she added 4-5 regular earth worms directly to the tank. Tonight I cleaned the filter on the pump and when I took the cover off there were two of these regular earth worms on the inside of the case next to the filter. I laid them on the gravel bed while I cleaned the filter and by the time I got back three minutes later they had already burrowed into the gravel. I never would have guessed that regular earthworms could live in water for a couple of weeks, apparently they found a place that was hospitable.
I have also been adding some worm bin leach-ate every few days. I'm not sure if its the worm juice or the system is starting to get into the "zone" but the plants have really perked up and the seedlings have just exploded in the last couple of days.

[Sylvia Bernstein]

that's a wonderful story about the resilience of worms, K! I agree with Murray about them being the secret weapon - they are enables us to never have to clean out those beds... continuing the aquaponic theme of turning waste into magic. As a quick aside for anyone who is considering adding worms to their system we are now selling them at The Aquaponic Source - http://theaquaponicsource.com/products.php?cat=35 - as well as a shelf stabilized compost tea concentrate - http://theaquaponicsource.com/proddetail.php?prod=ABAHF005 - for those who don't have access to their own brew.

[TCLynx]

Just an FYI about worms surviving in water. I've seen it happen. Not so long ago I was cleaning the pump trap on my big system and found many worms living in the pump trap basket. They were alive and well so obviously the water going through there has a good amount of dissolved oxygen in my system.
On another note, before I got my new batch of fingerlings. I had set my quarantine system to run the pump less often while there were no fish in there since the plants are happy enough with fewer cycles. Well, some worms had migrated out of the beds down the drain and wound up in the fish tank and since there were no fish in there the worms still were. However, without an air stone running in that tank and only cycling every other hour during the day and not much at all over night. The dissolved oxygen levels had gotten down to the lower limits for the worms I found some dead ones and only one living worm in that tank. They can drown or suffocate as the case may be if the water doesn't contain enough oxygen for them.

I suppose this might also be a good comment to share with people talking about running their systems only during the day. With fish in the tank, the dissolved oxygen gets used up far more quickly and supplemental aeration would be required if pumping is not keeping the dissolved oxygen levels high enough.

[Sandra Schafer]

Thanks for the information. The flow through worm composter is cranking right along so now with this great information some of the "boys" will have new digs in the AP units! We had read a little about this but now after reading all your post the process is a lot clearer.

[Ken Westervelt]

For what it's worth, the worms that normally come up after a rain are most likely nightcrawlers, and should work best in the deep end of your bin.

I've had a worm bin for a year now and it's doing well so far. You can really see where they live just by how the top bedding settles.

[Steve]

Nate, you could probably coax the worms out of your tower medium by laying a corse plastic screen across it (plastic bird netting works) and putting a layer of dampened sphagnum moss over the netting . Thats what I do in my worm tubs to get them to move so I can harvest castings.....they migrate to the food . After a day or so the lil buggers climb up into the sphagnum moss and start happily munching away,then get put into a new bin.
Just my 2 cents
Steve

[TCLynx]

I've found it is even easier to get worms to migrate down. I would lay the media from the towers on top of a bin with moist tasty worm treats below and leave the media on top to dry out a bit. Between the moist cool food below and drying out above, the worms move pretty quickly.
In worm bins I've found it easier/quicker to put a screen over fresh feed/bedding in the bottom of a bin and then place the worms/nearly finished castings on top of the screen and the worms migrate down into the moist fresh stuff as the castings dry out a bit on top. Gets more of the worms separated out of the castings than doing it the other way round.

Steve said:

Nate, you could probably coax the worms out of your tower medium by laying a corse plastic screen across it (plastic bird netting works) and putting a layer of dampened sphagnum moss over the netting . Thats what I do in my worm tubs to get them to move so I can harvest castings.....they migrate to the food . After a day or so the lil buggers climb up into the sphagnum moss and start happily munching away,then get put into a new bin.
Just my 2 cents
Steve