Hi Wendy, All,

I built my vermitoilet using your design, I've started using it (family of 6) early 2023, it has been good so far but 2 days ago, I found out all my worms were dead, the drainage is not working anymore, they were all drown. See picture below

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I have 2 IBC tanks, the other one was never used yet, I'll call it passive tank. I had a lot of tree branches and large wood pieces for slow carbon release in the active tank, see picture below showing the other passive tank were I moved all the branches from active tank. Initially when I set up my tank, I added a lot of quick release carbon, wood chip, cardboard but it got depleted most likely, and because all the branches, I couldn't mix it up.

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I think my system failed as the tank was lacking fast release wood chip to mix up with the rest, without it / carbon, it becomes too thick and blocked the drainage. Slow release carbon is fine but my branches were too long, preventing to mix it with new coarse wood piece.

The interesting bit, is on the 1st of June 2025, so not long ago, I saved all my worms from drowning, I had a blocked pipe, I fixed it and the water in the IBC tank flushed perfectly! I was really happy not having to dig into it more ... which I am doing now. So between 1st of June 2025 perfect drainage and now total failure, something happened. It was warmer than usual in Ireland, I guess it speed up the process of decomposition and led to this situation.

My plan is to:

1. Add more wood chip, the easiest to get in Ireland, to bring back the tank to a good consistency, good ratio carbon/poo & vermicast.
2. I will cut in small piece now my slow release carbon and may keep only one large for worms in case of, so I can mix the fast release carbon correctly. 
3. I will start using the 2 tanks, I will switch between the 2 tanks every 6 months, something like this.

What do you think?

Thanks a mill,
J