Your system sounds creative and very nice. You will need a place to investigate or tip over the system. Maybe another popcorn tin or large sheet of cardboard and your choice of a three tined hand rake or barbque skewer or gloves or bare hands. Maybe wait until family members have left the house for a bit since there may be a smell. There may be a puddle of water at the bottom of the bin despite the drain. You may stop adding food now. Especially bread, cornmeal, oatmeal type products if you are even adding them at all. When empty check if the drain is clear. When you rebuild your bin put a layer 4-6 inches is not too thick of dry one inch torn egg carton type material or similar. Have you been adding sufficient bedding along with kitchen scraps? I actually don't like the word bedding. Recently a poster did a nice descripton of what bedding does and the value of it. Even if it smells and you see dead worms pile the stuff back into the bin. Add additional layers of dry bedding if needed to dry out your materials. If the material really smells maybe put it in your outdoor compost or garden. Some people say they throw it away and I am always afraid they actually did. When your bin is happy again you can start adding kitchen waste again. But beware because the worms will ask, "Where's the Bedding?" Your worms should be "back on their feet in no time." Since you now have that second popcorn tin or pail dirty you might want to divide your worms into two bins or baskets. It should be great fun to discover what those worms have been doing in there.

What species of worm do you have? I've noticed that my PEs (perionyx excavatus/Malaysian Blue worms) have a problem that looks bad to me but may not actually be a problem. Many of them look like a bite has been taken out of their clitellum. I finally caught them mating and I found out that when they separate, each seems to lose a little chunk of their clitella. After that I kept an eye on them for a few days and saw LOTS that had the little bite missing and they seemed to recover - at least I saw worms in all stages of recovery from the bitten look. I haven't noticed that with my red worms.

Thanks, lots of info there. i'm not totaly sure on species as i bought them from a fising shop here in france and the were just called Worms.i've had a look through the web and found acouple of poss species but will investigate further when i have a bit of time, for now all i know is they like to eat and breed.

The dead worms i had found looked like they had gone through a mangle?!

So, to follow up. i spread some big bin bags out on the floor, popped on some rubber gloves and had a rummage. total body count of worms... 3 so its not too bad.

The smell as not too bad either, just felt like that good organing decomposing smell, nothing anairobic (appologys for spelling by the way).

I waill have to look for the post on "Bedding" as some of the old bedding has already been binned :( . i emptied the bin and dug around investigating, very interesting these worms! any way i seperated the worms and disposed of the dead. i then put a mix of torn toilet roll tubes, ripped up card boed box, cut up coffee filters and empty tea bags and some egg box. this gave me a layer of about 2 inch. then i returned to the old contents and took out all the big bits, large chinks of old egg box and anything still rotting. putting this to rubbish. what was left i put back in the worm bin giving me a layer of 4 inches. that leaves about 1 inch to the top of the bin.

theres still alot to be eaten there so im not going to feet for maybe 2 weeks, then i'l have a harvest and start all over again.

As for the bedding post, if you happen to remember the name or a date, i'd love to find it.

Thanks again for all your help

Can't remember. I think it just mostly said bedding gives moisture balance, plus and minus. Air space. PH balance. A place to hang out. Eventual food.

You might want to spread the material out on a table next time instead of the floor. :-)

The TP tubes, cardboard, coffee filters and egg carton are good. You might or might not find the tea bags have a very thin plastic liner that is heat sealed which never decomposes.

Don't let egg cartons escape your grasp. Capture them and put them to work.

If your bin is ok, I would leave it be. If they are eating, breeding and pooping don't give them time off, keep them on the job. I don't need to see mine all that often NOW, as long as I know they are working. I realize that it is early and you want to see what they are doing but try to leave them alone as much as possible.

Good luck.

Waiting for a while to feed them is a good idea. The most common mistake new vermicomposters make is feeding too much. You said 2 weeks. Check in on them in 1 week and see what's happened to the food you did give them.

Harvesting in 2 weeks, however, is optimistic. The old food/bedding isn't usually processed enough to use on plants for at least 3 or 4 months. During that time, you continue to feed them and add bedding. After a couple of months, you can shove all of the existing material to one side (the volume will be a LOT smaller than what you started with), and start adding bedding and food to the other side. Eventually, the worms will finish the one side and go looking for more food. You'll still have some worms in the 'done' side, but not as many and it will be easier to harvest. That's one of many ways to deal with harvesting, but it's a good one for beginners. You'll learn more as you read here, at redwormcomposting.com and vermicomposters.ning.com. Those are my favorite sites for worm information.