I had 5 bins of worms for awhile. I mixed peat moss. shredded paper and cardboard with some ground leaves. They love eggshells, too. You can over feed the worms and can tell by smell and the slimy moldy produce that they aren't keeping up.
They need some moistness with a spritzer, but not soggy! I tried all ground leaves as the bedding but it didn't work out, became too compacted.
You have to add dirt because they use the grit to digest.
When I refill a bin with bedding, I soak the newspaper strips and peat moss in warm rainwater, squeezing the excess. Warm works for 2 reasons-peat absorbs faster and worms not shocked from cold water.
I spent a lot of time sorting to separate the worms from the beautiful compost. The little yellow translucent balls are worm eggs and will become new worms where ever you use the compost.
I later didn't sort it so much but let the worms decompose it almost completely. You will lose worms this way but mine were multiplying so fast that I couldn't keep starting new bins.
I have quite a healthy worm population in my gardens from the years of worm composting.
Night crawlers won't work for a bin. They live 6' down in the earth and won't survive for long in the bin because of humidity and temperature fluctuations; a bin just isn't their environment. They are fine for a compost pile.
