http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sciaridae

I’m going to take another look at the Worm Inns.
Thanks again!
Rosa

We did actually throw out all of the old compost when we cleaned out the bin. Once the fungus gnats get going, they breed like crazy. So the whole bin was full of eggs, larva, and gnats. We tried all sorts of solutions first, including using those fly tape rolls and pinning them under the lid of our worm bin so the adults would die. We even bought this bacteria solution from an online garden store that is supposed to eat gnat larva without harming the worms. The stuff smelled horrible – our whole bin smelled like rancid water after we put it in. It didn’t harm the worms at all, but it was not pleasant to have in the house. We also covered the bin with mosquito netting (actually no-see-um netting, which is even finer than mosquito netting) so we could at least keep the gnats from escaping into our apartment. Every time we had to feed the worms, we would have quite a time trying to get the bin outside without releasing all the gnats that were trapped inside the netting, so we could feed the worms outside, just to bring the whole contraption in again.

After trying all of that, we finally decided to start over with a clean bin. We dumped all of the compost out on our porch outside and sorted through to save as many worms and cocoons as possible. (The cocoons look sort of like round popcorn kernels. They are darker and rounder than the pupae I showed in the video on this post.) We put the worms in a large bowl and then gave the gnat-infested compost to friends who have an outdoor compost system and don’t mind having the extra critters in it.

We took the worms inside and hand-rinsed them one at a time under tap water. I’m sure it was traumatic for them. They did not like it at all, and unfortunately I lost a couple of them down the drain.

But after the rinsing was over, they didn’t seem any worse for the wear.

We cleaned out our Rubbermaid tub in the bathtub and then filled it with fresh bedding and some new food. Like I mentioned in this post, it was not a good idea for us to do this right before leaving town for the weekend, because we hadn’t put enough water in the bin, and the worms had dried out really badly by the time we came home a couple of days later. We had to add more food and water to the bin to get the habitat wet enough for them. But after that, they were fine and the survivors multiplied back to the original population pretty quickly.

A few weeks after I discovered more pupae (the ones in the video), I decided we would switch to a Worm Inn. Best decision ever! We have had the worms in their Worm Inn for over a year now and NEVER had problems with pupae, gnats, or fruit flies since. They seem quite happy in the Worm Inn and it makes really nice compost. It was the best investment we have made in this whole worm composting process. See our post about the Worm Inn for details: http://mattandangelblog.com/2010/06/yet-another-worm-update/