Air holes on the lid is recommended if you will be closing the lid. Contrarily to popular belief, you do not need to drill holes at the bottom – your bin should never run so wet that liquid comes out of the bottom. I recommend a tote larger than 30 L volume for bait size worms. You may also want to decrease the amount of food given each feeding as decomposing food generates heat - a large feeding can generate enough heat in the summer to kill your worms! Placing a frozen water bottle in the bedding can also help them deal with summer heat.Įuropean Nightcrawlers can raise in large, opaque plastic totes. Try to move your worms to a cooler spot when ambient temperature reaches 30☌ and monitor for signs of distress. Heat is more dangerous to ENC's than the cold. In my personal experience, they are able to tolerate ambient temperature as low as -10☌ so long as the bedding does not freeze over. These worms can grow to between 3 and 8 inches in length, which makes them much larger than many of their more common cousins such as Red Wigglers ( Eisenia fetida and Eisenia andrei).ĮNC's thrive in temperature between 15☌ to 25☌. Sodium can kill your worms.The European Nightcrawler's (ENC's) scientific name is Eisenia hortensis, but it is also known as trout worms, super reds and giant red worms. If you feed them food waste, make sure that it’s low in salt.

If worms die after feeding them, remove whatever food you gave them and try a different feeding material.

The worms will naturally move towards the top of the soil on feeding day and this will help you remove some of them when it comes time to expand your collection. If they aren’t on a fixed cycle where the worms get food on a specific day, it will be harder to harvest them.

The feeding cycle is incredibly important when it comes time to harvest your worms.

Adjust the amount of food you give them in the future so that it takes them roughly 1 week to eat all of the food. Monitor how long it takes them to consume the food you’ve given them. After 12-24 hours of feeding your worms, check the worms to see if they’re eating it. To start, give the worms 2–3 lb (0.91–1.36 kg) of food for every 1 lb (0.45 kg) of worms that you’ve bought. Worms can eat animal manure, food scraps, shredded paper, or cardboard. Feed your worms roughly once a week to keep them healthy.

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