Worms in Aquaponics! 

+Aloha Terps, they do such a wonderful job and I'm so happy that I added them to my AP system! - You may also like some of my other channels! I personally am starting to work on The Fish Tank channel but you can see all of them on our network page here - www.HomeIdeasNetwork.com

How do you stop the worms from drowning?

Gerben Wiersma, you know I really haven't had too. They seem to avoid that area very well because I never see worms in my sump tank.

USE DAPHNIA MAGNA!

they won't go via siphon. ...they keep away from it...

How do you stop the worms from drowning?

@@tegannottelling They can live their entire lives under water no problem. They breath through their skin.

Looking it up:) Thanks!

Yes, they sure can but worms breathe through their skin and in my AP system the water is highly oxygenated so they live a really really long time in my water:)

What kind of worms are these& would you suggest earth worms?

Depends on your system for a IBC I use 4 Koi... to many and you have too much waist. Some people use 25 plus tilapia in a 50 gal barrel although I am sure you would have to filter more. Every system is different and gold fish and KOI are Messy... Cleaner fish like trout and tilapia are better.

If you want the best aquaponics system online then go here now: HootAqua.info

I thought about cherries another shrimp the only thing is the temperature drops too low for them during the winter and it is very difficult to heat that amount of water. Also I have to have nitrates in my system in order for my plants to continue to grow. I need to figure this out before I dive into this and start breeding shrimp like cherries:) Keep the ideas coming my friend!

I would do ghost shrimp or maybe crawdads way hardier and easier

It’s was in someone else’s post..

iblis khan, that is a very big question because it is hard to control pH organically. You can use R/O water but that process strips the water of minerals that your plants need. You basically have to re-mineralize the water. I ended up using General hydroponics pH down. It worked great and it is made up of mostly phosphoric acid which is the same acid in soda pop.

iblis khan crushed oyster shells in a net bag. it controls ph as well as adding calcium and other trace nutrient content.

The worm poop dissolved into the water and is eaten by the plants :-)

Nope, I have a constantly running:)

Plants eat it

They lived until it rained. When it rained the worms climbed out and got into the ground:) I seen like 3 climbing out of that bed and I think that is what happened to them.

thank you

Ahhh, "solids in my grow bed" Haha! Okay they're sorted! ;)

Easier typed then said:) Ha ha ha! Thanks for watching James!

If there is lots of air in the water then they will not die:) In systems like this there is lots of air so the worms will be fine! Yes, I have a video on how to make a bell siphon. Cool! We need more people growing in AP systems!

Home Farm Ideas bro Can u tell me how to catch the worms when the multiplies ...Please make a video on How to catch worms

Hindsight is 20 20 my friend:) I guess I could have and next time I will. It was to catch any excess junk from the worm bedding but it did not work as good as I had thought it would.

Caroline Blondeau , I thought the same thing, but the worms feel like they escape from the colander. Then they dive into the grow bed. For some reason, without the colander, half of them try to escape the grow bed.

Well Caroline worms are usually sold in or with bedding, soo the idea is they will separate themselves from the bedding and crawl into the bed. Then you simply remove the colander and add worm bedding to compost or back in your worm bin, plants etc... His worms were so clean it he could have skipped that step, but he was doing it the right way, your totally supposed to use a colander ;)

Thanks for the help in answering this question that Caroline has David Foley and Bryant Fernquist:)

I have not updated this one because the worms crawled out when it rained! A lot of them crawled out of my grow beds as well. I guess they liked it raining more then they liked staying put in my system:) I still have lots of worms in my system but no more in the little pound.

Have you try to understand why they prefered outside than the grow beds and the pound? I mean like this you can keep them in

this (the mass exodus of worms when it rains) is a common problem with outdoor vermicomposting as well. Because red wigglers are negatively phototropic, putting a strip of led lighting around the perimeter of your tank and grow media will discourage the worms from leaving them when it rains.

Ha ha ha:) God Bless you more my friend!

We had a rain storm come in and programs crawled out of the tank that had the guppies in it. They did live in there for about two months then that rain came and they left at night. I never found any dead worms.

That’s not a stupid question and that is actually a little more logical than what I was doing. I was doing it this way for film purposes:) I wanted to see the worms and get it on film.

There are many factors in learning home aquaponics. One resource I discovered which succeeds in merging these is the Keiths Ponics Site (google it if you're interested) without a doubt the no.1 course i've heard of. look at this unbelievable resource.

If you want the best aquaponics system online then go here now: HootAqua.info

I’ve put them in my system but never seen them again. There’s a difference between nightcrawlers and composting worms (Red wigglers). Nightcrawlers do come up to the surface but they mainly live lower in the soil. In an AP system they cannot go as deep as they would like because the water. Red wigglers on the other hand stay closer to the surface their whole lives which makes them perfect for AP systems:)

They are called red wigglers or composting worms:) Hope that helps Omar!

Frank, Dave, Cletus, Cindy, Stan, Gertrude, Shania ect ect

Ha ha ha! I did ask her:)

Chris Shepherd good question. I don't think they could survive in water as they usually live above water level. curious to know if that worked...

No, they did not die but they eventually moved out due to the lack of food. The water itself has LOTS of oxygen in it and worms are able to breath through there skin:)

I make sure that my stand pipe is 2" lower than the height of my grow media. This allows the worms a space above the flood area. Example would be a 12" tall grow bed with a 10" tall stand pipe. I never have ammonia spikes from dead worms, and I see them when I take out a plant, as they're wrapped around the roots in the hydroton.

That is what I do as well:) My worms can go from water to air really easy.

A little further science going on here too. The worms can breathe for awhile in water, as long as it is well oxygenated. I run powerheads in the tank to help aerate and increase dissolved oxygen. When your bed is flooding, put your fingers down into the media. When the water starts draining you can feel the air being pulled into the grow beds. This helps oxygenate the roots and also creates different water saturation and temperature levels for the worms. I find them in all different levels in the beds. One day I was cleaning a tank with a scratch pad, I left it on top of the grow bed by accident. When I came back later to feed fish I found that the worms had come up and were cleaning (eating) the algae that was on the pad. Worms are industrious opportunists and quite hardy. I often find egg pods when cleaning roots from harvested plants. FYI: The worms are red wigglers that came from Uncle Jim's and were part of a vermicomposting setup.

Yeah, they live in there for years:)

Hazel Blair, well there you go:)

I have some in my sump tank and fish tank. They eat and poop as well.

I did add them to the pebbles:)

Worms drown in water that has almost 0 oxygen in it. In this water I run air pumps in it all the time. Worms breath through there skin so the worms do not die in my water:)

Nope, they’re all still alive and it’s been over a year:)

How about bsf larvae?

I have both earthworms and red wiggles in my system and I have not seen any dead. Of course I probably wouldn't see their bodies but I would get a spike in ammonia when I test the water. Every time I dig down into the clay pebbles there are plenty of live worms. I also see earthworms. I do have an air pump running in my fish tank and that adds lots of oxygen to the water. Worms breathe through their skin so maybe that's why I don't have die off.

All I can say is it’s working great and it has been for many years now. You are missing something from your equations. My grow beds are flood and drain. It does this every 15 minutes or less which keeps the worms right at about the surface of the clay pebbles or a little lower. They feed on the dead or dying plant matter in my beds. I’ve even found tons of worm eggs so they are breeding.