Can pillbugs out compete worms?

16 years ago

In your opinion, can pillbug/sow bugs/rolly pollies outcompete your worms?

I have two 17 qt bins, one is very balanced and holds the majority of my worms. The other one has maybe 100 rollies for each worm. Ok, that might be an exaggeration, but you get my picture -- the rollies are swarming all over every inch of that bin.

I know that these bugs are supposed to be there, or are at least ok to be here. The question is, is there a point at which they are a hindrance instead of a help?

I have a bigger bin that I want to consolidate into -- I'm moving the operation back to the bathroom closet instead of the kitchen cabinet due to a one-year-old that gets into everything. I'm prepping the bin with a pint of compost plus a couple handfuls of worms. This week, the worms have left the compost and moved into the foodstock, so next week I want to begin the big move.

I'm thinking about waiting on the pill bug bin until a sunny day, where I can go outside and spread out the contents, rescue the worms and let the majority of the bugs be free in nature.

Thoughts?

Gena

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Comments (7)

sbryce_gw
16 years ago
I can't tell you whether pill bugs will out compete worms, but I can share some of what I have learned.

Pill bugs do a great job of breaking down the cellulose in the bin (paper, cardboard, leaves, etc). Also, they like to wander out of the bin. I have found dead pill bugs all over my house.
cathd66
16 years ago
Pillbugs tend to like it drier than worms, so if you moisten your bin somehwat, the pillbugs may move out.
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wonderpets
Original Author
16 years ago
Cath, right now I have the opposite situation. The two wetter bins are teeming with pill bugs while the driest bin has just a few.

I'm wondering how to de-bug my finished vermicompost. I'm pretty sure that if I were to buy some from a fancy garden store, it wouldn't come with...inhabitants.
cathd66
16 years ago
You'll never completely de-bug home made compost. It's all to do with inputs rather than tend-stage treatments. Commercial compost producers (and vermi-compost producers) always have a hot stage to kill off bugs and weed seeds- the product of this hot composting is then fed either to worms beds or to maturing windrows for the process to finish.
In the domestic situation you're adding 'foodstuffs' fairly continually, so even if you hot compost at some stage, there will always be a later stage for the bugs to get into your material.
wonderpets
Original Author
16 years ago
Bummer about not being able to debug my situation. There is just so many of the little buggers. :)
wonderpets
Original Author
15 years ago
It's me again.

I still couldn't tell you if the pillbugs outcompete the worms. I can tell you that when I removed the worms from the infested bins and left the remains outside to dry, there were so many dead pillbugs that it looked like gray snow in the bottom of the bin.

For those of you that bought your worms, did they come with bugs? I'm wondering if I buy worms, start a new bin, and never feed it anything other than scraps and paper, if I can have a bugless bin.

I know the pillbugs aren't a problem. They are just so...crawly. I figure they came with my free worms that had leaf matter mixed in with it.

Thoughts?
Gena
plumiebear
15 years ago
Gena,

I don't think you need to worry about pillbugs depriving your worms of food. A worm bin almost always has more than enough material for the worms to munch on. I think worms prefer food they can slurp (microbial slime), while pillbugs can handle more solid food. Worms co-exist happily along with many other critters.

I've purchased worms twice from online sources and they arrived bug free. The batch I bought from a local source came directly from a working worm bin and came with all sorts of critters. You could probably avoid pillbugs if you started with a clean batch of worm ecosystem, but things like mites & springtails will probably get in at some point.

Andrew