I have read a few threads way back about the possibility of protein poisoning and also the possibility that it's a myth and the worms died from other means...

I have a bin (the plastic kind about 8 gallons) that has only been active for a week now with a little over a half a pound of dendrobaenas (corrugated cardbourd and newspaper bedding) After about 4 days i started losing some and they had the string of pearls look. In total i think i have lost about 50 now. Decided to change the bedding a couple of days ago in case that was the problem. Didn't really seem too wet and I know i have not fed them too much (less than a handful) and I know people have said that sometimes moisture builds up in to puddles and they find live, happy worms in them but i definately don't have that much moisture as i have tried to stick with the damp sponge rule. Anyways, the new bed is drier, I wrung out all of the materials well and even mixed some dry in with it. (is there any way to know if it's too dry?) When I changed the bed i noticed a lot of happy moving worms, but also some that were just clumped all together into a ball at the bottom of the bin. Is this bad? Also after changing the bed i still have a lot of wanderers, in the morning there are several worms at the top of the bin. I keep the light on so have had no escapees yet. Is there anything else i can do to make sure i don't lose any more worms? I have put in some crushed eggshell (about 2 eggs). would more help? I know someone wrote that she could tell the ph of her bin by her worm activity, but mine seem to be doing both things- some are wandering around and some are balled up...

any tips would be helpful!!

Hi brandip! I Would say that the worms that died looking like a string of pearls was from protein poisoning but not from the new bin bedding. I think that it came from the lack of micro herd in the shipping material and the food added to it for shipment and prep for shipment by supplier. the worms ingest the food without enough action of the micro herd and when it gets into the worms crop and gizzard the bacteria in the worm causes the build up of gases and bursts the worms internal organs. If the worms are knotted in a ball they are waiting for better times. This is sort of a hibernation mode (estivation) that is common.

To fix the lack of micro herd I would put in a handful of dirt from the outside as long as no chemicals have added lately to boost the micro activity. Too clean (steril) of an environment is not what the worms are use to. They need the micro herd to live just as much as the O2 in the damp bedding.

When you get them use to the new environment you have them in and they are happy the conditions will resemble where they were born to them. Worms are like people in that they resist change especially of their environment. You study them and note that the more worm poo built up in the bin the happier they are and the faster they breed to a point thats because of the activity of all the bin inhabitants living in ecological balance for them. you with experience will begin to recognize small changes in the bin and will react to them and if you react positivly things will go to neutral (a balance) for their needs.

hi Larry, thanks for your response, I can't recall having read such a clear response to this question yet. I do have a few follow up questions... I did read that protein poisoning is kind of rare- so why doesn't everyone have this problem with a new bin? obviously everyone has to start somewhere and new bins will never be as microbially diverse so why doesn't this happen more often? also, would you say that that the problem comes more from the shipping or from my sterile bed (if that makes sense)? I do know that the worms did not have a lot of bedding when they arrived but they were delivered probably only a day and a half from when they were shipped so they were not in the packaging long. How do I avoid this in the future? I want to order more worms (as soon as I stop finding dead ones so I know that my bin is healthy) since I have lost so many. Should I go to a different supplier or just assume that the problem was from me being inexperienced?

I did look this morning and saw that there were still balled up worms. And I found more dead but not sure if they are new casualties or ones that were already dying. I Added some half finished compost from my cold compost pile outside. I only added a tiny bit at first because I was afraid it would be too acidic (there are a lot of pot worms living in it) and I didn't want to add too many pests to my indoor bin. Anyways, hopefully this helps...

Hi brandip, If you read a lot of the post of new wormers you will find that almost all have some starting problems from their prospective. I think some of the problems that are experienced are from the trama of being removed from the type of bedding that the worms are raised in. Most big worm farms that sell worms by the pound raise worms with animal manure mixed with all sorts of bio-degradeable material its bedding and food source. When the worms are removed and mostly put through a cleaning process of a couple of beds of peat moss before which they are shipped and in which they are shipped the process has already started. The shipper then adds some high grade worm food to keep them alive and fed until arrival and the recipient then puts them into a clean new bin with new bedding of various materials some shredded paper and perhaps cardboard cut up and moisteded but few people add in some really good for the worms percomposted material or even a handful of plain old dirt from the yard.

As to the rareness of the protein poisoning(acidic gasses in the ailmentary canal of the worm) thing I think its just not recognized for what it is and what causes it. We have a tendancy to try to heal or treat a sickness. In the case of protein poisoning the damage is done by the time we can assess it and it takes time to correct it. That being said the best solution I personally have had is to use powdered egg shells to combat it. The shells are mild calcium(lime neutralizes acid) and also provide some grit for the worms crops.

As to new bins not being microbially diverse I would use a couple inches of the precomposted material and dry paper for as long as possible before the worms arrive. I am aware that some folks do some things on spur of the moment but with the wait involved with worm delivery a few days is better than the just in time way of setting up a bin. Otherwise the best method is to take your propossed bin to the worm farm and have the worms bedding and all put into it for transport home.. For the folks that have to order by mail I suggest putting the bin togather ready for the worms as far in advance as possible.

The Pot worms are also an indication of a little to moist conditions which lead to acid by trapping bio generated gasses being dissolved in the moisture available. The pot worms, springtails and mites are all members of the compost comunity along with a host of others.

The aireation of the compost you have available will take care of most of the concerns of the acid (Worms like acid in 5.5-7 neutral range) and a few damp slices of white bread to collect the pot worms on top will bring their numbers down and you can feed your tropical fish or put them back to work in the outside compost pile.

Do a search on the protein poison subject in the forum and there are some discussions on it.

Since you had the worms a very short time before you noticed the problem, I will guess that the worms arrived in this condition, or close to is.
I would definitely call my supplier and talk to them about this.
Sometimes growers, that are growing worms for bait, will change up their feed to fatten them up before selling.
Anyway, any reputable grower would want to know if you had a problem.

Thanks for the advice Larry and Susan,
I have let the supplier know- I didn't let them know earlier because I was worried it was something I had done wrong. All of the worms were alive when I received them. How long does it take for protein poisoning to set in?
I do wish I had realized the importance of setting up a bin in advance (too late now... sob...). I read through a lot of websites before getting the worms and none of them mentioned it. This forum seems to be a better source for in-depth information. The reason I didn't set it up in advance was because I knew how important it was to have the moisture balance right and so I waited until they were here so I would have more control over that (I thought it would dry out too much or something). Alas! inexperience fails me again!

Hi brandip! We are all born with inexperience thats the learning curve we all face. Its just that some of us try things before we really do understand the basics.We resurch because we don't have knowledge. Then all the info out where we can get it is not in terms we readily understand. Then we get some info thats enough to do the correct resurch. We begin to understand. All the details of any subject one will never know. A good working knowledge can be had by observation and questioning. The cheapest(easyist) way to get information is collect it from folks who have some knowledge to give. This forum is about observations and discussion of thoes observations from all who participate. Observations that have similar perspectives and results. There are some that get different results and the results are then looked at and discussed to see why the difference. As long as you visit the fountain of knowledge you can drink for free only your time is involved. So let the party begin.

The above is the intro to lkittles philosophy 101 course. Lesson on the merrits of knowledge.
soap box away!

I occasionally find a worm...just one (sometimes two) like this in a bin full of healthy worms. For that reason, I don't go along with the protein poisoning assumptions. The ones like this are exposed to exactly the same conditions as are the rest of the vermi.

I don't worry too much about it because it's never a bunch of them coming unglued, so I don't make any alterations in the bins. When I go back checking, no other de-segmenting worms can be found. Might be a gene trait in one strain of worms, huh?....

Here's another I found in another bin...again just one.


These worms weren't newly shipped, or bought. They were born in the bins they got sick in as were all the healthy ones in those bins.

Chuckiebtoo

Hi CB2: In the case of your 1 or two worms dying with that pictured look I would say you are right in that they were probibly damaged in the segments that are stringy. Perhaps streched or pinched so that the tissue died and is disolving away. When all that is left of the cell structure is the epicheatoncell walls they pull apart and become seperated segmentally. The worms could live for some time after it happens or may die quickly depending exactly where the damaged segments are and if the worm can fight off bacterial infection at the site of the injury. Sometimes worms that are pulled apart appear to grow a new tail section really just heal and grow a few new segments to have a new or healed casting vent.

However when infection comes from the gut of the worm being damaged from the inside out due to rips and ruptures in the alimentary canal then something very different is happening. If it is happening to lots of worms in the same time frame then the pinching or streaching is probibly not the cause. For the most part worms can tolerate some mild rough treatment and remain ok from it. The worms are a little more tender in the bin bedding and that is why they have to be conditioned in order to make good fish bait. That is normally done in peat moss. The moss has the chemical acidity to toughen the cell wall and make it less suseptable to ripping during hook penitration and casting.

Sir, hook penetration is not something we like to talk about around here!

Now ikittle, you know I've been tending to, and studying, and inspecting, and documenting worms long enough to differentiate external injury (yellowish, green discharge, irregular, random tissue damage) from an internally originating malady with symptoms as obvious as those in this pic:
Study it again and tell me how those segments could be of external origin.

My conclusion from the original post about finding diseased specimens in a bin full of healthy worms remains that the disease/malady/problem isn't necessarily pandemic, and our assumptions that symptoms like in the pic are caused by protein poisoning are just that...assumptions.

Chuckiebtoo

Now, about the hook thing....some of us are more than a little attached to our worms. If I'm going fishing, I'll get some of those old, good for nothing fishing worms at the bait shop that are fulfilling their destiny with a hook.

Hi CB2! As a matter for discussion of the worms pictured it would take an autopsy dissection of the specimin and a determination of the type of microbs at work consuming damaged tissue. In the post above I was simply stating that the digestive tract was not the only way that a worm can give the visual appearence of the string of perals appearence but rather internal muscle structure damage can also look similar to the picture. Worm are more complicated(complex) than just a few muscles with a circulatory , nerves and digestive tracts. Each segment has several individual organ structures. Each of which can be damaged. With the attack of the micro level herd and the tissue brakedown to the naked eye the appearence is similar enough to give it all the same name. That does not mean that the original condition in the original post is not a correct appearence diagnosis to use to try a correction in order to bring a change to the mass dying of the worms.

I thank you for having and taking the time to discuss this in the forum. I am well aware that you have years of good experience and a high level of knowledge. As also stated above no one person will have every atom of knowledge on even one subject. But rather the totality will be in a very broad crossection of many observers and even then the parts of the atom will be unobserved.

The best we can do as observers is to disseminate what we see in terms that can be understood and hope it is understood. I am guilty of not enough in depth detail at times and too much detail at others its hard to know exactly how much detail is required to get the correct message to the intended recipients.

I saw a worm out in my yard that looked like that, so it doesn't just happen in bin conditions.

Deanna