Are there holes in the bottom? If so, They should work fine. They may be a little messy, though, since stuff can fall out the sides. The holes are a little big. If there are holes that big in the bottom, you will have lots of VC falling out the bottom, and worms crawling out. It will get a little messy, but you will have some of that with any Rubbermaid bin that has holes in the bottom.

They should breathe well.

For holes on the bottom of a Rubbermaid bin, I drilled 3/16 inch holes every inch around the parts of the bottom of the bin that were the deepest. The bottom has ridges to make it stronger. I drilled the holes in the lowest parts of the ridges. Since water runs down, I wanted to make holes where the water was going.

If you want to buy worms in Florida, Google Kazarie worm farm.

You could line them with landscape fabric which would prevent bedding/compost from falling out while still allowing ventilation and drainage.

Thats alot of holes in the bottom, are that many really necessary? I also did about half as many around the rim.

You need enough to drain water. I put in LOTS of holes, because I have a stacked tray system, and the holes allow the worms to move up into the upper trays. The drawback with lots of holes is that the worms also move DOWN into the your catch basin.

why not use window screen on the bottom of the bottom one to prevent this. Also I read that you can use metal screen with 1/4" in holes to catch the worms rather than using the stacked container method. It states to lay down the screen on top of your stuff, add fresh bedding and fresh food and fresh bedding thats all moist just like you started and wait a week. The worms move to the fresh stuff and you can lift the whole pile out because of the wire frame base. empty and put the worms back in. Seems too easy for all the trouble everyone else goes through.

Too easy to be true. Even after a month there will be a considerable number of worms and cocoons in the lower castings tray.

Why not use window screen? Because anything that blocks the worms' downward movement now was blocking their upward movement earlier when I was trying to harvest.

Why not use the screen on top method? Because I want finished castings. Using a stacking tray system, some of the worms stay in the lower tray and finish consuming whatever is left in the lower tray. The other options are to 1) harvest before the VC is finished. 2) allow the worms to finish off the VC without harvesting, which will kill the worms, or 3) switch to a flow through system.

A stacking tray system works just like the screen on top idea that you suggest, except that I can leave the upper tray in place for months (that is how I get finished VC), and when the worms move up, I don't have to do anything more with them. They are already in their new bin.

Understand that one week is not long enough for all of the worms to migrate up. I allow 3 months, and I still have a few worms in the lower tray.

thanks, I understand much better now. Another question regarding the second tray stacked on top. How close to the bottom compost does the next level tray need to be, is it right on top, supported less than an inch or what?

The upper try sits directly on the bedding in the lower tray.

All I need now is some worms, If everyone would send me some, then I would send them back in a year after mine reproduced. This would be like a charity borrow sort of thing. I promise not to kill them and would help others in my community with worm composting. thanks

Oh, a buy back scheme! Sure, send me a SASE, and I'll toss a few worms in it and mail it back.

Send this post to ten (10) friends and have good luck for the rest of your life. If you don't, you will die a horrible death! LOL

For the record, I use window screening to prevent worms from escaping/things falling into my catch basin.

My rubber maid looks nearly exactly like the picture. As long as your bottom most rubber maid which is sitting inside the catch basin rubber maid has it, you don't have a worm migration issue. Once your first bin is done, you take it out and your top bin now becomes the bottom bin, and so you put the window screening in between it and the basin.

I have an over-sized square piece of window screening which I lay flat on the catch basin - I then carefully set the first bin on it and lower it down, so that it pushes it down evenly and even up the sides a bit to make sure there's full coverage for all my wholes.

This system works really well and I've not had any escapees since then.