African Night Crawlers and How to Increase their Population
I have talked about Malaysian Blue Worms and how to increase their population in my previous post. In this article I talk about African Night Crawlers, another type of worm that lives in our vermicompost bin. Now to be honest I do not know if mixing composting worms is a great idea but in our case, we did not have much of a choice when we started our bin as it was incredibly difficult to find enough worms for our composting needs. Although we were successfully increasing its population slowly, we were very impatient as well! We did however, keep both species in 2 different layers of the bin.
African Night Crawlers are composting worms that are ideal to use for a home compost bin in a HDB in Singapore. They are nocturnal worms that grow up to about 20 - 30cm. They usually live on the top few inches and thrive in bedding or mulch. They typically come up at night to eat composting matter. They make ideal composting worms as they can eat 1.5 times their weight! Moreover, they can tolerate high temperatures within 21C - 29C, making them an excellent choice for Singapore’s climate.
How we Slowly Increased our Worm Population
African Night Crawlers reproduce quick. They reach sexual maturity in 5 weeks. During production they can release 3.5 cocoons a week with up to 2 hatchings in each. If you are on a budget or like us could not find enough worms to purchase, they are the ideal species to buy and multiply. We got about 15 African Night Crawlers (both adult and younglings) and witnessed baby worms in about 2 weeks. Baby worms are white, stringy, and really small!
We kept them in clear a transparent recycled bottle with an opaque paper outer sleeve which was detachable. This way we could monitor the growth when we need to while still keeping them happy in the dark. As opposed to directly putting them in our vermicomposting bin, the bottle was an ideal size in controlling the conditions like bedding, moisture, temperature, and PH balance. The last thing we wanted to do was overwhelm them! As for food, we fed them very little at the start. We are talking about 2-3 pieces of less than 1cm scraps every few days. When we witnessed the scraps gone, we fed them again. We made sure to keep all the other conditions like bedding (cardboard pieces), moisture level, and air flow as we would in a normal compost bin.
Adding Eggshells to Increase Worm Population
The passionate lady we bought the worms from gave us multiple useful tips on how to care for our worms. One of them was to add eggshells to increase the population. Upon doing some research we found that eggshells aid in worm digestion and in turn creating better compost. They are also useful in providing calcium thus reducing acidity in your compost bin. Highly acidic bins can harm worms. Eggshells aid in balancing the PH levels.
When adding eggshells never add them whole or crushed as the edges could cut your worms. Powder your eggshells in a blender first before adding them to your bin. This way the worms can break them down faster as well. We typically wash and dry our eggshells and keep them until we have attained enough to blend. Most of the sources I read did not mention in particular the amount to add but most state to add it in either once a month or when the acidity is high. We typically add it in intuitively and just do a general sprinkle of it in our vermicompost bin. As for our transparent recycled bottle we added roughly a teaspoon of it and soon after we noticed a significant increase in worm babies!
Conclusion
Both African Night Crawlers and Malaysian Blue Worms are generally good choices for vermicomposting in Singapore. The good news is, nowadays, it is also easier to find both these species as vermicomposting and living sustainably is gaining importance. So go out and grab yourself some of the most adorable and useful critters and start your vermicompost bin!
More resources:
The Worm Book: The Complete Guide to Worms in your Garden by Loren Nancarrow & Janet Hogan Taylor. E-book on the NLB website.