Does that mean that theoretically I can just feed them bananas only?

They really don't need a varied diet. But they may need something else if you're not seeing growth in numbers. A "small bucket" (how big?) may not give them enough room to live healthily and reproduce. Red wigglers don't mind being somewhat crowded but very cramped conditions will cause breeding activity to slow or stop. Other kinds of earth worms need much more space per worm.

Not sure how small it is... 2-3 gallons? I only have around maybe twenty individual wrigglers. And even that might be an optimistic estimate. I don't really want to get more until I can learn how to take proper care of them and get them to multiply.

Can you say more about what has happened in the past when the population crashed?

Twenty red wigglers is not a lot. If I'm doing the math right, that would be about 1/3 ounce of worm weight, allowing .016 ounces per worm. Going by the standard guideline of half their body weight per day in food, you should feed no more than 1/6 ounce of food per day. Call it an ounce per week, maybe. That would be ... one apple core. A skinny one. Definitely chop up whatever you feed, so it'll have more surface area per unit of weight.

The usual guideline for worm population growth is that the starting "worm weight" should double in about 90 days, give or take. Since after 90 days you'd have a mixed population of all ages, that wouldn't necessarily be 40 worms, but it should be double your starting weight or 2/3 oz of worms, so by October 9 you'd be up to feeding 1/4 oz of food per day.

With so few worms at the outset, even allowing for the fact that these guidelines aren't exact, it's going to take an awfully long time for the worm population to build up to any useful level.

I bought a hundred wigglers before. I used different containers but eventually settled on a one gallon milk jug with part of the top cut off and holes at the bottom (population might have already gone down by this point). I was still new to vermicomposting and still learning all the subtleties, humidity, air, overfeeding, bedding, etc. I think I used to less bedding initially so I added more cardboard and such. Can't really say I remember specifics, only that during the first few weeks/months of caring for them, there would often be a few worms trying to escape the bin. I'd start with a lot of worms but they'd eventually dwindle down to the point that the bin would seem to be empty if you didn't comb through it.

I think that trying to raise worms in a container as small as a one gallon milk jug is prone to difficulties. With a container that small, you have very little room for error. I would suggest starting off with a larger bin. Just keep it moist and don't feed too much. With such a small initial population your going have to be very patient.

Harry

More worms, more surface area and some melon should fix this problem.

I tend to agree that more space is better, at least a little more space. And I also think a bin that is more wide than it is tall/deep (i.e., more surface area) would function better. It would be better for aeration as well as allowing for worms to move away temporarily from conditions they don't like without having to resort to leaving the bin. There have been past postings here about small worm bins made out of "shoebox" sized plastic totes - you could search for them.

I have numerous 3 gal. round buckets for worm bins. HOWEVER, before I put the worms in there, I used bbq chicken take out containers. It's an oval black plastic container with a domed lid that has 2 or 3 holes in them. I seeded these containers with 30 mature worms showing clitillum with a small handful of VC I took them from. In the remaining space I put 2 squares of corrugated cardboard to soak up future liquid, added dry shredded newspaper and pre-rotted scraps on top of that about a handful. Once the worms moved to the pre-rotted food, that's when I added more worm food (always pre-rotted) to another area and more shredded newspaper as needed, also sprinkle with a hand sprayer as needed. Somehow, the worms got soo fat, much fatter than in my main bins and layed lots of cocoons. In about 4 months, that container is full with next generations of worms and that's when I moved them to the 3 gal. buckets. In about 6 to 8 months after that, the 3 gal buckets will have about .5 lb. of worms in them.

^^^ agree with the more space

18 gallon sterlite tote from walmart for $5ish. You will be much better off and far offset the cost of killing the little wrigglers in a tiny container. You need lots of holes in the bottom, especially in the valleys where water might pool.

Here is a video on setting up one of the tote style bins (if a picture is worth a thousand words than a video is....hopefully helpful? )