mealworm colony

[Amyboo]

i started a mealworm colony about 4-5 months ago, bought 1kg of mealworms from stockport pet warehouse, and following FreekyGeekys guide bought some supermarket brand porridge oats, bran flakes, corn flakes, weetabix and rice crispies, i had a old exo terra small flat faunarium laying around so used that.

after a few days i had aliens and then 4 weeks later i had a beetle and then over 2 nights i had about 30 beetles which i placed back in to the colony for them to breed.

since then i have been feeding the odd piece of potato skin, lettuce, carrot, cucumber aswell as Vetarks Grub Grub which you mix in to a paste and i rolled in to balls.

after months of doing this the same way, i was left with alot of rubbish in the form of dead mealworms, dead beetles and old food, the food didnt smell bad at all it just wasnt easy to find any worms as they all burried themselves in the bottom and in the corners.

the foods that were left over were Rice Crispies, calcium cricket pellets. in the bottom of the faunarium was a fine dust, which i guess was like mealie waste.

so last night me and my OH decided to scoop out all the mealworms, seperate the rubbish and seperate the aliens and beetles and placed them in to a livefood tub.

so now i am left with a poundstore bait box full of fat mealworms that will be getting fed to my leo's and hedgehogs. with these i am going to only use porridge oats and the bug gub, ebay bought as its cheaper and larger ammounts than vet ark stuff. i really hope that this second time around that i wont have as many dead mealworms or beetles or any left over foods.

i am also going to buy another 1kgs of mealworms and use the same faunarium with oats, weetabix and the mealworm grub powder and see how it goes again.

[freekygeeky]

the fine dust will have eggs / tiny mealworms and i mean tiny. you shoudl have loads, unless they didnt have enough wet food (fruit veg etc) and they ate the eggs abbies instead.
mealies are the easiest thing to breed they breed in my reptile room, in vivs if a beetle or two are left in there and so on.

[Amyboo]

yeah i figured the dust had eggs in it, we had been sifting the dust for ages, using a tea bag strainer but there wasnt any young mealworms in there.

we binned the dust, there must of been about 2 inches of the stuff lol, nevermind

we were just fed up of all the mess (dead mealies, beetles etc) as i said, we'll be using the aliens and beetles in the new set up, so should have young mealworms again soon.

perhaps they didnt have enough wet foods, but as i said we was using the vetark Grub Grub which you add equal parts of water too and it turns in to a paste in which we had been rolling in to balls and placing in the viv, just the product cost us about £5 for a tub and you get a pouch of food which fills just about half the tub, 150grms.

[freekygeeky]

Originally Posted by Amyboo

yeah i figured the dust had eggs in it, we had been sifting the dust for ages, using a tea bag strainer but there wasnt any young mealworms in there.

we binned the dust, there must of been about 2 inches of the stuff lol, nevermind

we were just fed up of all the mess (dead mealies, beetles etc) as i said, we'll be using the aliens and beetles in the new set up, so should have young mealworms again soon.

perhaps they didnt have enough wet foods, but as i said we was using the vetark Grub Grub which you add equal parts of water too and it turns in to a paste in which we had been rolling in to balls and placing in the viv, just the product cost us about £5 for a tub and you get a pouch of food which fills just about half the tub, 150grms.

oo coool.
well i aslways keep the dust, i get it out, put it in lunch box type things and leave it..
i went and just had a look at some whihc must be hmm about 5 months old now.. HUGE mealies, and even some beetles!! whoop!