I had recently received an order of a pound of ENCs, and one thing I noticed when I had received the box in my mailroom was that the box itself emanated an odor even before I got it to my apartment and opened it up. Like wet dog, but way more putrid. I had gotten the box home shortly after the mailman dropped it off, but it was delayed a day or two in transit... Just in case, I had my very sniffer-inept boyfriend open the contents outside on the patio and dump it into the bin. They all seemed alive as far as we could tell and nothing appeared amiss, but they smelled pretty bad. I thought the odor might clear up over time, but it's been 9 days now and the smell is just getting worse. It's stinking up my entire living room, and I'm just thankful my boyfriend can't smell much or he'd probably have me throw the whole bin out. I've checked it every couple of days just because I'm concerned about the worms, and I've noticed a couple of worms come up to the surface to die, which I've never seen before. There are mites everywhere - which I am assuming is my personal cleanup crew for what I imagine is more dead worms than I'm even seeing.
I've messaged the seller, but I'm honestly a bit freaked out and thought I would for more opinions/suggestions here. Should I remove the worms by hand, wash them off, and get them into new bedding pronto? Can anyone make sense of what is happening here? I'm still pretty new to this, but I have several other bins, and never had any bad smells... Much less straight from the package.