ENC Update: This morning I saw a few of them close to the surface but I still didn't see much disturbance to the bedding or food. Maybe they are just getting used to their new home now, we'll see.

I found a supplier closer to home and I might be able to p/u next week. Curious if they will look the same. I am going to set them up in a separate bin for comparison, after a head count.

My experience of Dendrobaena veneta is that they are not very good composters of waste food. Eisenia andrei is much better for this. I use DV for composting used tea leaves. I have two containers in my kitchen which I have stocked with DV and add all my used tea leaves to. I find they are excellent for this purpose. When I have used them to compost food waste, I have found they are very sensitive to environmental conditions and very easy to kill off. I think they prefer an environment full of carbon-rich material and do not like nitrogen-rich materials very much.

Thank you for your input. I now have 2 batches of ENC as DV is known in North America. I wonder if DV and ENC are really the same.

The second batch look the same as the first so I concluded, I must have received the same species. However, their behaviour is different. They are not shy at all, came to the top and seem to be consuming the offerings, but slow compared to eisenia fetida/andrei and I rummage a bit deeper into this second bin and I found cocoons.

I put 280 adult worms in the first bin and have found a couple babies on the bin wall. I hope most of the adult worms are still there. Still no smell of dead worms, fortunately. I got hold of coffee chaffs recently and I was told it is considered a brown. I also got hold of a bucket of brewers spent grain that I mixed with the chaffs and dry this mix for easy storage. I will switch their diet to this mix sparingly at first and see how they like it and I will report the progress, or not.

Thanks again bjc79

I would be very interested to hear about your progress.

I am certain that the worms referred to as European Nightcrawlers in the USA are Dendrobaena veneta. The name Eisenia hortensis is incorrect. You may find my previous comments on this topic to be of interest. I have appended them below.

I wanted to address what seems to be a very widespread misconception in the world of vermicomposting. It is the belief that Dendrobaena veneta and Eisenia hortensis are one and the same species of worm. In fact they are two separate species. Veneta was first described by an earthworm taxonomist called Rosa in 1886 while hortensis was first described by Michaelsen in 1890.

The species are morphologically very similar; both have widely paired setae, a clitellum covering segments 26 – 33, and tubercular pubertatis on segments 30 and 31. Veneta is a large chunky worm, usually with well-marked stripes whereas hortensis is a much smaller thinner worm without obvious striping. Veneta is typically larger than Eisenia fetida and usually over 5cm in length while hortensis is normally smaller than fetida and shorter than 5cm. Veneta is the worm known as the European nightcrawler in North America.

There seems to be an idea prevalent amongst vermicomposters that at some point scientists decided to rename D.veneta and call it E.hortensis. This is not correct. There has indeed been debate over which genus the two taxa should be placed in. Some authors classify them as Eisenia species and others as Dendrobaena. The most recent work has placed them both in the Dendrobaena genus. Despite the debate over which genus they should belong to, earthworm taxonomists are all in agreement that they are separate species.

I have no idea where the suggestion came from that veneta and hortensis are synonymous, but it is a very widespread idea. If you search on the internet, most vermicomposting sources quote it as fact. I would love to know the origin of the myth.

I currently keep both species. At present I only have a small population of hortensis; I am hoping to expand this and I am very interested to see how well they perform as a vermicomposting worms. Scientific studies have shown that in theory they should be as effective as Eisenia fetida and Eisenia andrei. Hortensis worms do not seem to be commercially available, however. Veneta are of course very easy to get hold of. I would be very interested to know how many people are currently using hortensis for vermicomposting. Of course it is hard to find this out, due to the confusion over the names.

Oh wow; I’m just the basic worm farmer, nothing scientific or anything but I did borrow a book from the library, the Clive A. Edwards book, Vermiculture Technology: Earthworms, Organic Wastes, and Environmental Management. I don’t remember what’s said about EH & ENC. The library is closed due to the pandemic or I would have borrowed it and check.

Wikipedia lumped it into one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendrobaena_veneta

Do click on the references. I searched other sites. They all agree that EH and ENC is the same worm but there are conflicting info about their traits, habitat and food just to mention a few.

While rummaging in my EF bins, I sometimes find a few worms that are bigger than the rest. Now that I know how ENC look like, they are definitely NOT ENCs. Wondering if they could possibly be EH. Maybe in future I will separate them and see how they'll turn out. Is the tip of the tail perfectly cylindrical or a bit flat.

If EH and ENC/DV is considered the same worm, how can I find anything about the real EH or see a picture of it. Do you have one?

""while hortensis is normally smaller than fetida and shorter than 5cm."" If this is the case I really cannot understand how they could be labelled DV.