African_Fever Posted April 3, 2007 Report Share Posted April 3, 2007 I picked up some red worms (from here - http://www.wormsatwork.com/ ) a couple of weeks ago in an attempt to both culture some food for my rays and do some composting(figured I'd get some larger bins going by the summer in the garage). I have the worms in the basement right now, and they seem to have been completely overrun by some small 'mites'. They look like small white 'eggs' (fat, round, and smooth), about 1/2 mm to maybe 1 mm across, and are all over the compost mix (newspaper, cardboard, and some vegetable scraps). Is there any way to get rid of these, or am I best to just pick out some of the worms I want, wash them, and start over? Also, it seems as if there's also now a ton of white worms in the culture (look the same as the red worms only smaller and white - up to 1"). Would these white worms do ok in this culture, or could I start a different culture with them to make it more efficient for their production? (I have cultured white worms before, but it seemed they too always became overrun with mites, only their mites weren't so egg looking and were much faster). Thanks in Advance! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jvision Posted April 3, 2007 Report Share Posted April 3, 2007 I have read of people flooding their cultures to get rid of the mites. The mites float, so if you overflow the box with water, you should get rid of them. Then you just have to drain the box... hopefully you don't have a watertight bottom. Otherwise, you'd be looking at starting a new culture. I see the mites from time to time in my whiteworm culture, but I'm pretty negligent with it, so I'm thinking that if I don't feed the culture for a couple weeks, then the mites die off. This is all just anecdotal evidence, so take it with a grain of salt. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Catmandu Posted April 3, 2007 Report Share Posted April 3, 2007 The white mites you have might be springtails,there annoying but wont hurt anything and the only way to get rid of them is by starting a new culture after washing the worms, the springtails float so they're easy to seperate out.The white worms you see are probibly young redworms they look like whiteworms when they're young.Good luck Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toirtis Posted April 3, 2007 Report Share Posted April 3, 2007 Good article for you: http://www.aquarticles.com/articles/manage...Earthworms.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Terrie Lee Posted April 3, 2007 Report Share Posted April 3, 2007 Baby earthworms are tiny and white could your worms have bred? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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