Update:
I'm still a wimp.
I've been feeding the worms about once a week..probably closer to once every 4-5 days, as soon as we have enough food to make it worth disturbing the box and bedding to put the food in. As we've..I've...fed them, i use my garden claw to pull things aside, place the food in there, and then cover it back up. I never really checked on the worms until the past week. I was convinced I was killing them off and I just didn't want to know.
So this time, when I went to feed them, I made sure to do some poking around, stir things up, make sure things were moist enough and that there was air in there.
In some spots there were hardly any worms. Not much noticeable food either.
In other spots....yeah..
In other spots it was like that first day when that big blob popped out of the container.
In these spots there's a lot of moving mass, sometimes not even any brown stuff around, just worms and some food piece, all huddled together.
Each time I popped open one of those spots my daughter and I would shriek. Not out of fear, just..the suddenness of the surprise, lol.
There were some very thick worms, and some long ones. So those were obviously growing well.
There were also some very tiny almost see-thru ones, so obviously some of them are reproducing.
There seemed to be more huddled groups hanging around the banana peels.
The coffee grounds seems to contain thicker and longer worms.
And so far...noone's tried to escape...that we've seen.
I can only watch for so long before all the movement gets to me.
But I'm not totally freaking out....however I still refuse to put my gloved hand in there, lol.
I've got a plastic container with a hole punched lid set aside for the intent of pulling out a couple of worms and place in there so that I can observe them without all the mass. I just haven't gotten around to actually pulling a worm out.
I never got around to taking a picture of their location.
Suffice to say that they get enough oxygen moving through there, but are out of the way, no cats have laid on the lid that we know of. (Though they are interested when we take off the lid. They haven't acted like they've actually noticed a moving worm yet, which is a little weird as two of them are very curious and very playful. They just seem to sniff and then leave or try to figure out why the humans are so interested in this box.)
The box is so out of the way that we barely remember they are there.
No neighbor visiting would even notice the box either.
I haven't pulled out any compost. I'm not in any hurry.
In fact, This last time was the first time I've added a second layer to the box. I haven't even added food to it yet.
So far we haven't had any fly problems. But then the weather was kind of cool. It's warming up now, so we'll have to see how the fly thing goes. Haven't seen a one yet, though (knock on wood).
No ant problems either, and ants is something we always see in this house.
There's not much smell. I mean, when i take off the lid and dig around in there then I might get a whiff of something that smells kind of sweet, pungent?? But when it's covered up, we don't notice anything at all.
One week we were concerned because we barely had any food for them (that's the week they got some coffee grounds from work). But now I'm not too worried if I feed them only once a week. Some weeks there seems to be more food than others. But from what I saw this past week, there's still plenty to go around without overwhelming them. Especially if they're growing thick and breeding.
Um, ok, so that's my update.
