Which Worm is Right for You? African Nightcrawler...

The last worm I am going to talk about is the African nightcrawler. This is the largest of the worms, besides the Canadian nightcrawler which is not a composting worm. They are a tropical worm that need higher temperatures, typically over 60 degrees, and will not handle the temperature drops that ENC and Wigglers will.

The up side to African nightcrawlers is they have a large appetite eating close to one and a half times their body weight each day which is second to none. Only my blue worms even come close to keeping up with my ANC on food consumption. They produce larger castings also and some say the most sought after castings. Mix this with their extremely high rate of reproduction and you have a heck of a composting worm. In ideal conditions they only produce and average of six to eight babies a week but they can become sexually mature in as early as five weeks.

African nightcrawlers makes a fantastic composting worm and reproduces quickly if your into breeding worm to sell but they also make a nice bait worm being as large as they are so if you are looking for a great dual use worm and can provide a subtropical environment for your worm bin then the ANC might be the worm for you.

I could not get my camera to work so the image above was take off google just to show the size of an African nightcrawler. I did not take or own this photo used.