5 replies to this topic

[dermy]

I've been doing "Isopod Composting" for about a year in "The Big Leagues" and have really am enjoying it. I like how simple yet complex it can be. You can either have a very elaborate System that needs some maintenance, or a very low maintenance system. So far mine is very low maintenance.
 
Here are some pictures. I fed them about 1/2 a cucumber worth of peels:

Warning: Very Large Pictures, I forgot to re-size them sorry!
 
 
The Iso-Bag System itself

The bottom is now supported by Duct tape:

Here is is with the contents inside before feeding:

Still plenty of Composting area for them!



And then a nice layer of dry bedding, to help with the moisture:

Edited by dspdrew, June 15 2016 - 6:28 AM.
Fixed bbcode

[JWRay]

Sorry to necro an old thread, but any update or details on your isopod composting efforts?  Is it really just isopods in a ziploc with some dirt?

 

I have been interested in trying some sort of in-house composting just like this but wasn't sure how huge of an isopod colony I would need to maintain to do any sort of quantity.

[dermy]

To be honest with you I wouldn't recommend Isopod Compost for "quantity" of Food Wastes, this did work out well, but the upkeep of adding more moisture/bedding was too high and eventually the bin died out

 

 

As for you, I would recommend something more on the lines of Worm Composting/Vermicomposting, which uses "red wiggler" composting worms [you can't do it with general "dirt" worms] and if you get enough worms you can do some really big quantities of food waste, esp. if you optimize it and stuff.

Edited by dermy, June 13 2016 - 9:34 PM.

[JWRay]

To be honest with you I wouldn't recommend Isopod Compost for "quantity" of Food Wastes, this did work out well, but the upkeep of adding more moisture/bedding was too high and eventually the bin died out

 

 

As for you, I would recommend something more on the lines of Worm Composting/Vermicomposting, which uses "red wiggler" composting worms [you can't do it with general "dirt" worms] and if you get enough worms you can do some really big quantities of food waste, esp. if you optimize it and stuff.

 

Thanks for the response.

 

Yeah I guess it wouldn't necessarily be for mass quantities (not where we currently live that's for sure), but I figured even to do the peel from a single cucumber would take like a million isopods.  But maybe not?

 

While I am sure worms are better if you are purely interested in composting, they just are not cool enough.  I wanna mix pleasure with purpose!

[dermy]

 

To be honest with you I wouldn't recommend Isopod Compost for "quantity" of Food Wastes, this did work out well, but the upkeep of adding more moisture/bedding was too high and eventually the bin died out

 

 

As for you, I would recommend something more on the lines of Worm Composting/Vermicomposting, which uses "red wiggler" composting worms [you can't do it with general "dirt" worms] and if you get enough worms you can do some really big quantities of food waste, esp. if you optimize it and stuff.

 

Thanks for the response.

 

Yeah I guess it wouldn't necessarily be for mass quantities (not where we currently live that's for sure), but I figured even to do the peel from a single cucumber would take like a million isopods.  But maybe not?

 

While I am sure worms are better if you are purely interested in composting, they just are not cool enough.  I wanna mix pleasure with purpose!

 

Well to be honest i feel like the "microbial community" inside the bin helps a lot more then just the Isopods alone, I'd say it takes at-least 100-150+ isopods to at least do something like the peel of a cucumber, but in small chunks, not the whole thing. Also chopping and freezing helps break it down much faster.

[JWRay]

Also chopping and freezing helps break it down much faster.

 

 

Cool, thanks for that idea.  I never would have thought about freezing it.