Trying to reuse any worms will continue this problem - put them in the garden.

I think you will have to clean it and start over.

I have to think the seller knew about this.

I'm not clear - did you buy it filled with bedding and worms?

I don't think it's hopeless - but you'll have to put the worms on a diet for a while. I would treat it the same as any overgrowth of non-worm beings - Lots of new dry bedding on top and no new food for at least several weeks. When the moisture levels and the food supply go down, the gnat population should, hopefully, go back into balance. The worms won't starve in the meantime.

If in the future, you just can't get a handle on the gnats despite lengthy bin diets, then you could go to Plan B and release the worms into the wild and clean out and sterilize the bin. But I would definitely try controlling the gnats with dieting first.

Thanks for the input.... Yes, when I bought the WF 360 it was already loaded with worms (he only bought 500 - I was told this unit needs 1,000). Its very wet, has never been drained, it only has two of the trays in use. So, I don't think he used it long. Said he got rid of it because of the smell and gnats. So, I sorta knew what I was getting. I figured for $40 though it was a great deal.

I'm going to try to dry it out and get rid of the gnats first.

If anyone has any ideas, please share and I will update my progress.

Thanks!

Figured it was too wet if there were gnats. Keep in mind you will also have to tolerate all the eggs hatching. I'm sure that will take time and patience.

A few friendly spiders may also help out. :-) If it's the kind of Worm Factory with the dome lid, you could put a couple spiders underneath. I have the kind with the flat lid that sits on top of the bedding, so I just have to hope for spiders in residence nearby.

Well, first things first, the gnats are probably little vinegar flies, attracted to, tada! vinegar! So, if you can, put the 360° outside for a bit, use some cheap little cups of diluted vinegar, about a tsp. vinegar to a cup of water, add a pinch of sugar to each cup and set them out to catch the flies. Then, I think I would empty the 360° altogether, put the contents into a recyc bin or even buckets temporarily, and clean the WF, with a little bit of a mild dish soap in water, rinse the WF pieces off well with a hose, let them dry. Now, lay a couple pieces of landscape cloth out, pin them down if necessary, pour the WF contents out on the LC in the sun, and as it dries, scrape away the dry bedding material, dry layer by dry layer, until the worms in it are exposed, huddled up in a small pile. Scoop them into a small-med bowl with fresh, moistened peat, place them out of the sun. Now, reassemble your cleaned 360° fill it with fresh moistened bedding, and add the worms back into your cleaned, refurbished WF.

Argh, and now I have gnats. Serves me right for handing out advice when I've never actually had a full blown fungus gnat invasion before. But various flying flies, including fruit flies and drain flies and such, were the main reason I stopped sharing a living space with my worm bin when I had one in past years.

This time around, I had some fruit flies and a few gnats - the fruit flies are pretty easily knocked down with vinegar traps, burying the food well, and withholding new fruit foods for a while - but those gnats! They eat decaying matter so you can't starve them out, because they can keep eating as long as the worms can. And I definitely had eggs in my castings, because a carefully-prepared gift package of castings was full of the damn gnats when I opened the container after it had been sealed for more than a week (used yogurt tub). Ugh!

I caught a few with vinegar traps, caught a LOT more on fly paper hung over the bin, sucked up a lot with the vacuum cleaner, encouraged the ancient spiders in my basement to help themselves, but you know there are still always more where that came from. My newest tactic is exploiting the fact that fungus gnats are not strong flyers, so they can't get far, but they do fly toward light. I am leaving a small fan blowing on the bin, and one single light on with a fly paper strip next to it about 7 feet away in the basement, away from the breeze. So whenever I open the bin and they fly up, most of them can't hover over the bin but will be whirled away into the darkness, and then will be attracted toward the light, away from the bin, and on to the sticky paper of death. We'll see if this latest bit of cleverness helps at all.

Strategy seems pretty sound to me, theparsley!

I've had gnats before and leaving the lid off for a while spelled their doom :).

Wonder how the OP is making out?

when you have a fly infestion, cover the top of the bedding with new bedding and do not feed for two weeks. Little flies will leave

Eek! A centipede!

I found a BIG centipede hanging out on the wall next to my worm bin. I have seen similar ones out back on my patio, where they like to hide between some old pavers that I have stacked up there, but I haven't seen them in the basement before.

It might not be so bad, since I encourage biological control of the gnat and fruit fly problem around the worm bin (including some big scary spiders), but centipedes are Bad News because they eat worms too! Not to mention startling the worm farmer. Fortunately, I have my vacuum cleaner plugged in next to the worm bin, because I've been vacuuming up excess flies and scattered bedding bits, so I managed to vacuum up the centipede the second time I saw it.

Nature is getting a little bit too wild around the worm bin. I got some mosquito dunks and I'm going to try some BTI (bacillus thingamajigensis israeliensis - I may be remembering that somewhat wrong) on the gnat and fly problem.

gosh, I never worry about anything in my worm bin except slugs and snails. Had a black racer the other day - may be 2-3 ft long. He eventually left.

It is surprising the number of other critters that like to eat worms. I guess they are like the deer or gazelles or something of the soil - fodder for all kinds of predators.

I've been getting sentimental lately about the fireflies here in Philly, since I used to catch fireflies when I was a kid in New England, but having spent most all my adult life in California I haven't seen them regularly in many years. But they are city bugs here, so I see them on my patio and all over my neighborhood. Then I found out that their larvae eat worms! Oh well, raw nature I suppose, and the worms outside just have to fend for themselves, just so long as my bin herd is safe.

Tentatively, I think I *may* be starting to get the upper hand on my fungus gnat problem. I don't want to speak too soon.

For a while there I had both fungus gnats and fruit flies flying around my bin. Fortunately, they seemed to stay in the basement for the most part, although I occasionally saw one or two upstairs. It's not too hard to tell the difference, fruit flies have fat little round bodies and fungus gnats are skinny little black things.

From what I've seen, the fruit fly population eventually will crash once there's a lack of fruit in the bin - that is, once it gets past the stage of decomposition they like. Fungus gnats are a lot more persistent. They don't fly very far or very well and seem to like to rest a lot, so fly paper catches quite a lot of them, and a lot of them also seem to just die on the floor after flying around a light for a while. I was vacuuming those up, to the point where I was starting to dislike the thought of how much nitrogen was flying out of my bin.

I bought mosquito dunks, Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis. From my research it appears that this strain of Bt ONLY kills mosquito larvae and fungus gnat larvae. Since it kills the larvae, not the adults, the flying gnats aren't affected and you have to wait for those to die off. It is not effective against fruit flies or anything else, including caterpillars. Nevertheless I have been *very* careful to wash my hands a lot before going near my pet caterpillars. A mosquito dunk has the bacteria in a cake of some kind of substance that doesn't dissolve fully, but kind of crumbles up in the water over time. Pro tip: DO NOT put it in a spray bottle of water, it WILL clog the sprayer. Duh.

I put 1/4 mosquito dunk in a bottle of water and spray/sprinkle some into the bin every day or so. It's not clear to me how far the bacteria will disperse into the bin on its own and whether the water carrying the bacteria really needs to wash through all the bin material. I have just mainly been sprinkling the top of the bedding in the top tray of my worm factory and hoping for the best. It's about eight or nine days since I started doing this, and now the gnat population finally seems to be crashing, though I still see a few. Stay tuned.

p.s. It does seem that the same Bti bacteria is available in a granular form as well as Mosquito Dunks:

http://www.planetnatural.com/product/mosquito-bits/

However, at the store I only found Mosquito Dunks. I got a big pack of a dozen for a few bucks, and using 1/4 at a time (I figure it might last a month) it seems pretty economical. I suppose you could grind up the mosquito dunks and/or use the mosquito bits and just put those in the bin. It says that the 'bits' can be placed on the soil to kill fungus gnats in potted plants, but I wonder how effectively the bacteria would disperse in a bin, versus a potted plant where you'd be watering it in regularly.

Yeah, I spoke too soon about the gnat population crashing. It's certainly not at its peak, but there are still gnats. Granted, I haven't been applying the Bti for that long - less than 2 weeks - and it may be that more time is needed to kill the new generations of larvae, especially since I don't want to drench all the material in the bin and then have to deal with excess sogginess all through the trays.

Today I got a hank of mosquito netting, and draped it over the WF. I got the kind that has an extra fine mesh (to guard against 'no-see-ums') so I'm hoping it's fine enough to block gnats. I guess the idea with netting is that the gnats collect under it, and you can vacuum them out periodically. Onward....

If you have gnats and fruit flies, you need to add new bedding and not feed for 2 weeks

As I explained above, though, not feeding doesn't help with fungus gnats, because they eat decaying matter at all stages of decomposition, so as long as the worms can eat, the gnat larvae can eat. It's much easier to get rid of fruit flies that way, since they don't go for fruit once it's gone beyond the "fermenting" window of decomposition.

Since bedding alone doesn't totally block access to the adult flies in a WF (they can always get through the cracks between trays along the side, and around the sides of the lid), the mosquito netting is intended to be a more effective way to do that. That's what I'm testing now, along with continued use of the Bti.

I visited my bins yesterday, and little black and white striped snakie has made himself at home. Lies right under my plastic sheeting and hardly moved when I put food in. We are becoming friends!!

Yay snakes!

Of course, he is probably eating your worms. But, if you can spare a few, having bugs eaten too may be worth the trade-off. I like snakes, and was very excited to find a little northern brown snake in my patio garden recently. He is, of course, also probably eating worms, but there seem to be plenty out there to go around, since the robins keep coming back and going STAB STAB STAB in my mulch.

I think he is eating my toads as I don't see any in any of the bins. I had him last year also. So he is becoming a regular resident!!

Anti-gnat mosquito netting over the bin. Actually I think this color is olive green, not Victorian funeral black. It's held in place by a giant rubber band. Those are very handy things to have around the house, it turns out.

Update: I believe the netting is helping to drastically reduce the gnat population. There are still gnats, but the number is much less. At least once a day, I go down to the worm bin, vacuum up any gnats crawling on top of the mosquito netting, and then take off the netting and vacuum up gnats crawling out of the top of the bin and along the cracks between the stacking trays. I also vacuum as many as I can out of the air around the light over the bin (they fly up toward the light when they're disturbed). I also have a fly paper strip hanging over the bin, which used to get extremely full within a day, but the "catch" there has been declining as well.

I am not so convinced that sprinkling the bin with "mosquito dunk" water has much effect. Maybe it would work better if I was willing to drench the whole bin and then drain the runoff, but I'm reluctant to make that much of a mess and get the bin that wet. But without doing that, I don't think the Bti in the water can really have a chance to reach all the gnat larvae. It might not be a bad first measure to take with a really badly infected bin, though.

I am almost ready to declare Gnat Victory. Well, not 100% elimination of all gnats - that's probably not realistic - but a very, very low population. I put a new fly paper up over the bin every week, and this week's has caught only two or three gnats in 24 hours - contrast that to earlier this summer, when the paper would be almost covered in gnats after one day. I think mosquito netting is a winner.

The netting is a good idea although Im guessing it is fruit flies and not gnats. I use apple cider vinegar in a container on or near the bin to draw them. I cover it with plastic wrap and poke holes in it so the FF can get in and they cant get back out. I usually add a couple of drops of dish soap.

I've had plenty of both fruit flies and gnats, but as I posted above somewhere, the fruit flies come and go and are very easy to knock down in a short period of time, because they don't live on rotted food after a certain point in the rotting process. Also their life cycle is much shorter than that of fungus gnats. I've had some re-introductions of fruit flies into my house via fruit, and I see them flying around here and there, but they haven't gotten into the bin in a long time because of the netting.

But it is easy to tell the two apart, even in the air, because they have somewhat different flight patterns. Fungus gnats go straight up and down more, but fruit flies hover and circle close to surfaces. The fruit flies I've gotten have mostly been tan colored and they have easily distinguished fat little bodies with stripes and colored eyes. Fungus gnats are all black, have smaller, skinnier, pointier bodies and longer, clear shiny wings. They also have longer legs, although I don't notice the legs when they fly around, perhaps they are tucked up or just too small to see.

This is a good side-by-side comparison photo, but I don't think it's to scale - fungus gnats are smaller than that in comparison to fruit flies. Can't see the colored eyes on the fruit fly here, but the ones I see mostly have red or sort of raspberry colored eyes.

Fly paper catches fungus gnats easily but fruit flies rarely land on it. Fruit flies will come at your face (they like CO2) but fungus gnats don't seem to care about that. After dark when I'm on my laptop, fungus gnats like to come and fly at the screen. They also like to head for the windows whenever they get up out of the basement, but I have a friendly spider in the front window helping me out with that. Her name is Gertrude.

The easiest way to tell them apart in flight is FF are fast flyers darting here and there where gnats are just cruisers and slow at that.

I believe I have achieved gnatlessness. I haven't seen any in about two months. I keep the mosquito netting over the bin with the rubber band at all times, only removing it when I need to add food, take out VC, or bother the worms.

I have seen a few fruit flies in the house from time to time owing to my pesky habit of buying produce, but no evidence of those making their way into the bin either.

Its not very hard to rid yourself of a gnat or ff infestation in the winter. In either case they will try to lay eggs in either soil or food matter. For ff I use apple cider vinegar and gnats I use sticky cards near any plant containers I may have . As someone else has mentioned these critter will come to lit computer or tv screen in a dark room. Its a confirmation of sorts if you have any of either. The other day I noticed one ff sitting on a indoors tomato plant. I quickly set out a small dish of apple cider vinegar and the next morning I noticed the one ff in the dish and only one . Currently I appear to be free of both annoying pests at least until warmer weather presents the option for both to appear.

If I came across a used bin I would first assess the condition of bin before moving on. In an already bad condition Im sure I would start from scratch . But because I already possess thousands of worms in my factory at least the expense of buying new worms would be saved.

Wow just read the whole thread... it was a fun read, so sorry I missed out on all the fun.

Each fall when we bring in plants from outside we risk bringing in fungus gnats for the winter... its one of the reasons we've been slowly switching away from peat moss based soil-less potting mixes to using more actual soil and some coir (to lighten it up a little).

A couple of winters back, amidst a gnat plague in the house, I found a product online that specifically claimed to get rid of fungus gnats naturally. It is a sponge filled with a particular nematode (thousands of them actually, or so they claim) that target gnat larva and being very tiny they burrow into the larva and ...well you know. The trick is to get it shipped fast and not exposed to weather extremes either during the trip to your house or during storage... you don't want them to die before you get a chance to used them. I ordered fresh from the "manufacturer" to take care of any possible storage issues and timed it with the weather forecasts so it would ship during moderate temperatures in route and got it, I believe, in 2 days transit time. The stuff is not cheap... so I used one of the sponges and put the other in the fridge. I soaked the sponge in lukewarm de-chlorinated water and squeezed it out several times. You can't actually see the little buggers, so this is really all being done based upon pure faith... makes one sort of feel foolish at times wondering if it's all just a scam (ala "the emperor's new clothes")... then I watered all the plants with this water containing invisible nematodes. Anyway, in a week the numbers of flying gnats in the house really dramatically decreased... in another week I was convinced the gnat larva were definitely being controlled but was it 100%?... down to the very last larva?? Can't say for sure if it did completely resolved down to that last gnat larva because by the end of the month it was time to move the plants back outdoors for the late spring and summer so that stray one or two adults seen flitting in the house could have been from a straggler larva population that escaped the wrath of the invisible nematodes... don't know?

theparsley... Just a thought here... is it possible the netting isn't what actually solved your problem? perhaps it could have been your own 'invisible nematode' population finally balanced out the fungus gnat larva population? Anyway I believe one of my bins may also have a fungus gnat problem, so we just put it out into the garage yesterday where the temps fluctuate between 32 and 50F all winter long. The worms don't seem to have an issue with this so... we shall see if the fungus gnats can survive it as well. I'm betting not.

No reappearance of fungus gnats or fruit flies since I put the mosquito netting on my bin back in July of this year. I have had a few fruit flies get into the house on fruit, but none have established in the bin. It seems pretty clear to me that interrupting the life cycle of the flies - that is, making it impossible for the adult flies to get out of the bin, fly around, mate, and come back into the bin to lay their eggs - is what does the trick. Once I put the netting on the bin, the adult flies could get out whenever I took it off to add food or harvest the bin, but they could not get back in. I had a pretty heavy infestation in June and July, but have not seen any new flies since the end of August or so.

Reporting back after almost a year to say that there has been zero recurrence of fungus gnats or fruit flies in my bin. I still keep the netting over the bin, as pictured above, at all times.

Love this thread! Do you think this would work (the netting) with drain flies? I have no other idea how to get rid of them. My drains aren't the problem-- never had these flies before the worm bin.

Precautionarily I did clean the kitchen sink drain and all the bathroom drains. 9 drains--- ugh. Anyway... besides the nematodes and netting, I can't find any other suggestions to try. They seem to avoid the fly paper and homemade "vinegar traps".

Have a great night!