New Fire Belly Toad Owner With Questions

[spock22a]

A worm bin is nothing more than a rubbermaid tote with holes drilled in it, worms, food scraps, and newspaper/bedding. It can be as simple or complicated as you like. The worms should be going through the scraps quickly enough that the scraps shouldn't mold. Also, I like to pile a lot of newspaper shreds on top so that if anyone looks in the bin it looks like a paper recycling bin.

Here's my friend's website on vermicomposting: http://www.wormcompostinghq.com/

My bin only has holes drilled near the top. Unlike some composters, I don't add water to my bin or moisten my bedding because my food scraps are fairly moist already and too much water can make the bin stink and the worms will evacuate the bin. My bin is on the larger side (20 gallons I think) because I compost for 4 people. My worms don't crawl out (unless they're starving - I've forgotten to feed them on occasion) unless it's moist enough to do so - but my house is on the dryer side, so the air that goes in those ventilation holes is undesirably dry and keeps them under.


The most you'll spend if you can't find any worm wranglers near you will be $30 (free shipping) for a pound of European Nightcrawlers to get you started. Red Earth Worms - Red Worms Make Good Dirt

That seems like something I will definitely use once I have an apartment.... I don't think it would work too well in my dorm though. That seems like the type of thing that would really affect my asthma, especially in a small space like my dorm room. I'm planning on getting something along the lines of a small cooler, so I can put some night crawlers and a few other types of bugs in there....

[spock22a]

Another quick question. What type of supplies do you keep on hand for emergency situations (ex- fire, ect). Right now I have a paper to go cup from the dining hall at my school. Once it's warmer I'm going to get a critter cage from walmart or someplace, but I can't find any in the stores right now because we have about a foot of snow on the ground.... Anyways, I figured that having something on hand for a temporary cage was better than nothing. Now at least if the fire alarm goes off I can just grab my frog (cage is small enough that I can catch him for cage cleanings with out a problem) and head out side. I was just wondering if there were other things people would grab in a situation like that. Admittedly, if the alarm goes off it's more likely that someone burnt their popcorn, but with the way the dorm is set up there isn't any way to know for sure.