Help me ID these guys

12 years ago

Hi everyone!

So I am still pretty new to vermicomposting, can you help me ID these guys??

In the picture, the brownish ones are the cocoons and the little white guy in the middle is the worm. They are everywhere. This is a picture of the top piece of an egg carton, you can see the holes of the carton on the top of the picture, so they are really small, maybe 1/4 of an inch or smaller. And they are covering probably 40% of the egg carton (which I have covering the top of my worm bin) and they are also in my worm bin, but I can't tell if they are going after the bedding or the fruits and veggies or what.

After doing some research I thought they might be pot worms, but the cocoons are easily seen with the naked eye, plus, the worms themselves seem rounder and not as long. They seem to wriggle around like normal worms do, but again, I'm still new, so what do I know!

Please help me ID them and let me know if they are good or bad or neutral for my worm bin.

Thanks in advance for all your help!!

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Comments (9)

barbararose21101
12 years ago
Are you sure those are cocoons ?
Could they be fly larva ?
CarlosDanger
12 years ago
The little white guy in the middle is not a vermicomposting worm, and the little brown things are not vermicastings.

If you had that many vermicastings, you would have a #@&%load of vermicomposting worms....not just that one albino thing in the middle.

Cocoons are always hard to see, spread throughout the vermicastings/bedding, and will be in various stages of maturity (darker when closer to hatching).

They are also more like this pic of an emerging red wiggler from the casting.

CarlosDanger
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meags
Original Author
12 years ago
I suppose maybe they could be fruit flies. But there are a ton more of these little larvae than there are fruit flies.

If they are fruit flies, how do I get rid of them??

I've already added a bunch more carbon sources and less food scraps. What else can I do?
barbararose21101
12 years ago
Pick up that cardboard and put it in hot sun.
Kill 'em one way or another without toxin.
Put the whole bin outdoors until they hatch.
pskvorc
12 years ago
Relatively speaking, that's a pretty good picture, but I can't enlarge it enough to see detail on the larva. TO ME it looks like fly larva (the maggot), and pupae (the brown cocoons). I don't THINK these things would be harmful to your worm culture, BUT... I would HATE the mess of flies that come from all of those pupae.

Paul

This post was edited by pskvorc on Sun, Aug 3, 14 at 13:25
rhizo_1 (North AL) zone 7
12 years ago
What about house fly pupae and maggots?
meags
Original Author
12 years ago
Yeah, I was afraid that they were maggots too! But I have zero meat in my bin and they are mostly just on the egg carton. And I have not had any house flies at all. Luckily my bin is already outside, so it doesn't affect my apartment at all. I'll try putting it out in the sun and see if that gets rid of it. Thanks!!
mendopete
12 years ago
Looks like maggots to me.

Beware of putting your entire bin in direct sunlight. You can cook a newer small bin pretty quickly, killing not only maggots, but worms as well....

Good luck and welcome to vermicomposting!
SelenaD-Composter
12 years ago
I had a pile of those. I posted here and got no response so I just ignored them. Nothing happened. They were there and then they were gone. I never figured out what they were and they (whatever they there) didn't cause any problems. Mine were actually in a pile IN my dirt so when I found them I just rebuked them where I fount them.