Aquaponics - Worms

I've been growing a tomato plant for over a year (I think) now, and it's been looking very tired over winter. It was originally in my grow bed with a bell siphon, but at the end of the season I decided I'd pull it up, that was six months ago. In the interim, it's been sitting in a bucket under the input flow to that same growbed, and as far as I knew there was no media for it to grow in, just a stack of roots in a bucket with a drain hole half way up the side.

It looks like this now.

It's seen better days.

It's not quite as dead as it looked, and there are still a few patches of life in various places, but it's definitely time to retire it.

It had quite a bit more green on it only a few days ago, but I cut all the healthy bits off in an attempt to get them to strike roots by sitting them in the fish tank. There's even a few tomatoes.





For some reason it didnt work, even though normally it does. Rather than striking roots, the shoots just all died off.

But when I had a look in the bucket it was living in I found there was actually some media in the bottom. Around a quarter of a 10L bucket of scoria.

But interestingly, I also found these.

Pictured herein what apears to me to be zero gravity are a large handful of some of the most insanely lively worms you ever did see.

All living entirely under water for ever.







I accidentally left them in the water I had them in to take this photo, and within only a few minutes, they had turned from the liveliest bunch of worms to a very sleepy bunch of worms that I'm guessing were not enjoying living in the still water without the dissolved oxygen levels they had enjoyed before.

I think I found them just in time, and have put them into a container with some rotting vegetation to become the first inhabitants of my worm farm. They took nearly five minutes to dig themselves into the ground whereas when I was trying to get them out of the scoria, I sometimes chased a single one for what seemed like five minutes.

It seems worms like to breath.






120 Things in 20 years - Discovering the obvious about Aquaponics and worms.