Overfeeding a worm bin

I overfed my can-o-worms over Christmas. It got loads of vegetable trimmings and plate scrapings but what really over did it was a tub of crab that was decidedly off, and some ham and fish that was in the fridge and had gone off. (I had decided I was really going to push it to its limits- don't try this at home unless you've been worm farming for a while and have plenty of worms in your wormery.)



Overfeeding a worm bin can be a very serious problem. Especially when you're just starting out as your total volume of bedding and worms will be lower than in a well established bin
Worms need food to rot before they can eat it, but as food begins to rot it can cause the following problems:
Decomposition uses up oxygen which the worms need to breathe. If the rate of oxygen depletion is greater than it can dffuse back into the area, worms will need to move to somewhere with more air. In a small or enclosed system, this means worms gathering on the lid, trying to escape or dying.
As oxygen is depleted, decomposition switches to anaerobic decomposition. This is the nasty, smelly type of rotting (the gag-inducing smell you get from a rancid bin). It also produces toxic substances which will harm your worms unless they have somewhere to escape to.
If there is enough oxygen for aerobic decomposition to continue unchecked, the wormbin will heat up, potentially getting too hot for the worms to survive.

When I went to get some wood in the garage this afternoon, I could get the smell as soon as I opened the door...
Surprisingly the worms were more active than in any of the other bins in the garage, despite the can o worms being nearest the garage door and probably most exposed to the cold. Given that there's plenty of uneaten material in all the worm bins, I can only assume that the can-o-worms design is allowing plenty of air through to the worms and the food and keeping microbial action going. To deal with the smell I simply reversed the trays (put the top smelly tray into the middle) so that there was plenty of vermicompost between the rotting material and the outside air. The idea of this is that vermicompost can act as a powerful deodoriser due to the bacteria present in it. I also added some finished vermicompost to the food tray to speed up breakdown. Amazingly a few hours later, there was no smell in the garage, though I didn't tempt fate by opening the wormery. I'll have another look tomorrow, then if all seems to be going well, I'll do the best thing you can do for an overfed wormery and give it plenty of benign neglect!!

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