Laura, I believe those are potworms in your bin. Baby redworms just have a pale pink color - much as you might expect for such a small redworm. Never seen potworms in my bins before but I do seem to have occasional outbreaks of the red mites.

From what I've read the potworms will not harm your worms but might indicate a low (acidic) pH which can be caused by anaerobic conditions. Try adding some dry bedding and powdered eggshells. I dry my shells then grind them into a powder using a small coffee grinder. Usually toss some into my food-scrap pale before even adding to the bin.

Great to see the pictures but give us a little more info so readers can give some appropriate advice. eg. feed rates and sources, moisture levels, type of bin etc.

Re the red mites, some say they are harmful but I really can't say. Other than removing the items they seem to be feasting on I don't know how to get rid of them.

Good luck,

Harry

It's hard to be sure, but I agree with Harry that these are most likely potworms, as they look more white than baby red wigglers usually do. Very very small baby red wigglers are sort of more clear than white, and they usually get a pinkish tinge right away.

How mature is your bin system? I had lots of mites when I started my most recent worm factory, but I hardly see any now that it's been going for almost a year. I think they tend to balance out somewhat more when you have a good critical mass of worms working the material for a while.

As for gnats, in the later posts on this thread http://forums.gardenweb.com/discussions/3959742/bought-used-wf-360-gnat-infested-help?n=34 I described what I did when I had a huge fungus gnat infestation last summer. Since I have been keeping my worm factory completely covered with fine mosquito netting, I have had no return of the gnats.

There's no way to get rid of mites from a bin. Besides, they help break down big pieces of kitchen scraps and in a way, speed up the decomposing process a bit. You can reduce the amount of mites you've got in your bin. Use a piece of bread and make it a little damp (some people use milk but no point in wasting good milk, I'd say). After a while when you see lots of mites stuck to the bread, take the bread, tap to the side of your garbage bin, put the bread back to trap some more mites. Rinse and repeat.

I just had a look and there are definitely still mites in my bin - I just don't notice them as much as I did when they thickly coated everything in the bin that was good to eat. It doesn't really matter because the end result is broken down food in either case, but a really dense coating of mites on everything in the bin can be annoying, especially when you need to put your hands in there and wind up with mites crawling up your arms. (They don't bite, but it's kind of like having grains of sand crawling on you.)