Worm Bin - moving first tray out

[farmercathy]

Hi all, new to this worm bin stuff. I'm at the 3 month mark and the bottom tray is ready to be moved. I let them sit for a week w/out feeding them like it said so that the worms would move up, but when I went to take it out it was full of worms. Probably like 50. Is that normal? Should I have given them water during that week even if I wasn't feeding them? Or should I just empty that tray with said 50 worms or so in it? I'd hate to lose that many worms every time I take a bottom tray out to dump, but if that is how it is then I won't worry too much I guess.

TIA,

Cathy

[Alan]

that's a good question, unfortunately I don't have a setup like that and I don't know that I can give a good answer short of saying that worms will eat and eat and eat through their own "waste" time and time over and any time you harvest casting you will loose some worms and eggs, however since red worms reproduce one capsule every week with 2-20 babies in them it won't take you long to build back up the little bit of population that you are loosing.

I hope this helps. I myself don't harvest castings out of my worm bins (rubbermaid totes) for 6-8 months at a time.