"I do now see one eerie, one inch long, fat worm."

Yes, that! That is what my worms have been doing! I'm not seeing as many now, but I have one like that in one of my bins right now.

Could it be the corn meal? I haven't fed mine any citrus in a long time. I have backed off on the grains and the coffee grounds for now.

Corn meal? No doubt. They say just sprinkle a bit like pepper (no salt on worms)on the top and don't mix it in. I poured it in like there was no tomorrow. Actually it was a mix of mostly corn meal with biochar, some natural fertilizer that was something like powdered chicken feathers and bioorganism and maybe a bit of the bottom of a bag of potting soil. I mixed this all up. I dumped in tons of the stuff remembering the warnings to just sprinkle a bit on the top. Pouring by the cup fulls into a 4 gallon container day after day is what it takes to do in the worms. From what I can tell one can sprinkle cornmeal all they want with no fear.

I still have this box full of past pull date energy bars. I really would rather feed them to the worms than toss them in the trash. I guess I will take a really long time to get rid of them. If I sprinkle a small amount on the surface of the bedding, the worms seem to really like it. I have done that with rice that got bugs in it. For now I have stopped feeding it to the worms until I can see that the worm population is growing again.

You live; you learn.

I guess that means the coffee grounds are OK.

No coffee drinkers here even at holidays, so I can't stress test coffee grounds.

Why not prove a point by putting 20 worms in a small container with a crushed bar and see if they all die off in a day or two?

OK. I had already started to set this up. I have a small container, bedded with shredded cardboard and fed heavily with crumbled power bar. I let it sit for a few days to let the power bar start decomposing. After reading your post, I checked on it. It is choked with mold. I broke up some of the mold, put in a little more water and added 10 worms. We'll see how they do.

Did your original bin have a lot of cardboard? I think cardboard is a great equalizer and cover of vast sins. Add too much water... the cardboard soaks it up. Not adding enough water... the cardboard slowly gives up the moisture it has and the worms flock to it. Too acid... too opposite of acid... cardboard evens it all out.

But it does seem to be the test to do.

I use mostly cardboard for bedding in all three of my bins.