Worm ranch - white babies?

[snickersnake]

For the past two weeks, every time I take the top off the worm ranch, it's almost totally white all across the top. There are some large white blobs surrounded by smaller blobs and it looks like it's been snowing in the ranch with a fresh snowfall every day. When I looked closer, I saw they were moving and I am assuming that these are babies, that the many eggs scattered around the box are all hatching at once now. Does this sound right? Do the eggs all hatch when it gets warm out? I don't know much about this and just assumed that the eggs hatch after a certain amount of time.

[DrKate]

I used to have a worm ranch, and I remember in the instruction booklet one of the questions addressed was "are all those little white things baby worms?" and the answer was no, they're larvae of some kind of fly. Harmless IIRC, but may indicate sub-optimal conditions for your worms. Unfortunately I don't remember what you're supposed to do to correct the situation.

But also... If you bought composting worms for your worm ranch they're almost certainly "red wigglers." They're the ones that sometimes, maybe depending on what they're fed, become toxic to garter snakes. I never found anything that listed what you should or shouldn't feed to avoid making them toxic. Maybe someone else here who's been feeding ranched worms without problems can post a "recipe" of what they feed...

(If you didn't buy composting worms but instead put earthworms or nightcrawlers in your worm ranch, that might be part of your problem... I don't think those worms "work" for direct composting of food scraps.)

[Stefan-A]

(If you didn't buy composting worms but instead put earthworms or nightcrawlers in your worm ranch, that might be part of your problem... I don't think those worms "work" for direct composting of food scraps.)

That would be correct. Eisenia are the toxic worms used in composts and in the wild they are typically found very close to the surface, among or just beneath the leaf litter.

[drache]

earthworms do fine with the compost
it's just that they are a bit slower and have no loyalty to your compost heap, whereas apparently the red wigglers do
I do give my compost plenty of leaf litter which might be more appealing to the earthworms - I think it has something to do with the ph

[Zephyr]

Those could be one of three things. Either they're the larvae of phorid flies (notably, Megaselia scalaris,) micro-worms (smaller earthworms that share the same environ with their larger brethren) or grain mites. If it's grain mites, you may have a problem on your hands.

[DrKate]

earthworms do fine with the compost
it's just that they are a bit slower and have no loyalty to your compost heap,

Hm... When snickersnake said "worm ranch" I figured it was one of the tiered home-composting bin systems that you dump your food scraps into, not an old-fashioned compost heap. That's pretty intensive feeding, generally all food scraps and no yard waste. I don't think regular earthworms can process food scraps nearly fast enough to keep everything from just rotting (and attracting flies). When you buy one of those systems, typically they come with a mail-away certificate for compost worms, which are red wigglers...

Snickersnake? What kind of compost system (and what kind of worms) do you actually have?

[snickersnake]

Sorry. "Magic Worm Ranch." I have wonderful earthworms in my garden, and last fall, on the recommendation of someone here, ordered a ranch kit from Cabela's. It's worked great since then. I have two kits so that I can move them back and forth. I only feed them the earthworm food that comes with the ranch (and in the summer, you can buy the bedding and food at Walmart). These are not red wigglers and they do not eat compost.

I keep them in the basement where it is always nice and cool and I have very healthy worms. Lucy (my garter snake) has been eating them. There isn't any bug that could get into this, unless it was something in the bedding and is just hatching now. I mean, every time I open the lid there are more that have hatched. This has only been going on for a couple of weeks. When I prepare the bedding, it looks right - I haven't noticed anything strange about it. So, when you say that these are not earthworms, that really surprises me because it makes sense that they would be. Now, I don't know what to do because they are just everywhere. I am going to have to start over. And if this came from the bedding, I will have to order new. I ordered a 25-lb bag last spring and thought it would last me a long time. But that's the only place they could have come from.

If anyone has more information, I would sure appreciate it. I have worked too hard on this to have to throw it all away now. (By throw it away, I would put them in my garden, but I have worked too hard to get nice, healthy worms for my snake. Crap.)

[snickersnake]

Hi, I was hoping that someone would have an answer for me after I went into more detail about the type of worm ranch and worms. Again, it's the Magic Worm Ranch that they sell at Cabela's, and I raise garden earthworms. I have two kit boxes and instead of buying more, I bought a 25 lb. bag of bedding from a bait site, and I get the food at Walmart (it's the same bedding and the same food that comes with the Cabela's kit). I don't know what I am supposed to do about these tiny worms. I will try to get in touch with the company, I guess.