Hi,

I've just killed some hundred of worms :(

I had quite a big chunk of worms in a vermicomposter in my flat where I was adding some vegetables from time to time. Suddenly it started to smell bad and when checking the compost I couldn't find any worm.

Since I live in a flat I took all the liquid from the old compost and left it in the back of the vermicomposter hoping that I could later recover it when I grew some new worms. I order some new red worms and left them in the upper part of the vermicomposter for a week without adding any other food than what it came with them.

A couple of days ago I started adding a bit of the old compost next to the worms so they could decide to jump if they liked. Some of them started to do so. Yesterday after making sure that everything was fine with them I decided to put a bit of the old compost under the new compost with the worms. But today after coming back from work I saw that there were no worms at all :( I could just find a couple of them (from hundreds) and they were dead.

I've seen the old compost contains some flies and small white worms (maybe the flies ones) which may have something to do. So far I understood it's better to throw all the old compost away and start from scratch although I wanted to avoid this since cleaning it in a flat it's probably not the best idea unless I want my girlfriend to kick my ass.

I just wanted to hear opinions from the community about what could have caused the problem so I can avoid it in the future. I have to admit I feel bad about killing animals even if it's by accident.

Thanks