Breeding WaxWorms.

[Lex]

I have been breeding these beasties for many generations now, but am fully tired of having to sift through by hand the culture medium to find the worms, its painstakingly slow.

My question is this, how is it done commercially? they can't possibly have someone sitting there all day had picking waxworms, how is it done please for the sake of my sanity?

[Miss Lily]

Originally Posted by Lex

I have been breeding these beasties for many generations now, but am fully tired of having to sift through by hand the culture medium to find the worms, its painstakingly slow.

My question is this, how is it done commercially? they can't possibly have someone sitting there all day had picking waxworms, how is it done please for the sake of my sanity?

Can't help with that I'm afraid, but may I ask you something? How the heck you managed to get them anywhere big enough to feed off! Mine have been going for a couple of months now and are still way, way too small to feed them to my pets! They are doing better than the first lot I tried breeding last year, so something must be OK, but obviously not perfect for them! What is your secret?

[Nix]

I don't know about the culture medium, is it flakey solid like a bran?

We used to sort mealies out by using a home made contraption that looked like this:



Fill the sieve with mealies and substrate straight from the box, put a desk lamp over the top, switched on. The heat from the lamp makes the mealies squirm out over the mesh and drop into the tray leaving behind the substrate bran and stuff. Watch the lamp doesn't get too hot by being too close. Then you just collect them out of the tray. You can go away and leave them, come back half and hour or an hour later (depending on how many you need, how much you have to sort out etc. Hopefully this will be a solution for you! Sorry if it isn't, I don't know a thing about breeding waxies!

[Crestie Chris]

Make a trip to a fishing shop and get a riddle, or if not get some fine mesh put all the contents in it and let the substrate fall through