Be Careful With The Water

When you are doing vermiculture, things can get very simple. Just add some food for the worms, keep the worm bin wet and there you are. In a few months, you will have the best organic fertilizer ever.

Problem is, there are always complications. I’m not saying is not easy, is just that, sometimes, you will need to take care of some other things. On this post, I’m going to talk about water. Since worms are mostly water, that should be one of the things you have to care about.

Nowadays you receive water in a tube. Unless you are on the country side, you can get tap water just opening the sink. The problem with tap water is that, most of the time, it is treated so it won’t be harmful for you. The problem is that good for you is probably bad for your worm bin.

Not that the water will kill the worms, but vermiculture is all about bacteria, and bacteria is very sensitive to chlorine, that is one of the most favored disinfectant used in pools and tap water. Also, a bucket of water with chlorine will not kill all the bacteria in the worm bin, but it will surely decimate them.

Son, if you do this, you will be in an endless circle:

Bacteria grows and food decays because of its action
Worm feeds on the decayed material
You put water with chlorine and kill a lot of bacteria
Go to step 1

Since the point of vermiculture is to give the worm bin all the advantages they can get, not to rely on bacteria’s numbers to cope with all the disinfectant you are pouring every day.

You can take care of this in two ways. One is to use an anti chlorine that you can buy in any aquarium store or something. You can get a large bottle in some hardware store (I got it in Home Depot) and save some money. Although is pretty inexpensive, the aquarium will sell it in very small quantities and much more costly.

The other one is to use a special filter to get rid of chlorine. The one I know is made with activated carbon, but I guess you will just have to ask.

So, take care of your worms with good, disinfectant free water. This will keep the bacteria in your worm bin happy and your worms thriving.

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