Mealworm colony?

[matthewdownloads]

Hi all,
Basically I want to try and get a colony going before I get my leopard gecko, for various reasons including costs, and the fact that the pet shops today were "out of stock" for mealworms (which wouldn't be good if my pet was hungry).

I'm looking at the page at mealworms, meal worms mini, live mealworms, , but I'm a little confused what to buy.

1. Do I get "mini" or "regular" mealworms? I presume I get more worms for my money with "mini" ones.
2. How many grams of them do I need to buy? Is 55g enough, or do I need more?

I won't be getting this lizard for a little while, so there will be some time to get the colony running. Thanks!

Edit: oh, and also - I've seen people saying they "clean out" the mealworm colony by running everything through a siv once in a while, but surely the tiny mealworm eggs would go through the siv as well?

[Paul B]

Adults would be best I suppose.
maybe you need to give them somewhere to lay their eggs that can be removed when sieving takes place.

[swift_wraith]

from my experience, mealie colonies can take a while to establish. I use a small plastic fish tank with 2" of ground up shredded wheat and oats as a substrate. I started off throwing buying 3 tubs of adult mealies, throwing 1 in the tank and using the other 2 as feeders. When the ones in the feeders started turning into little aliens I picked them out and put them in the tank. After about 3 months I now have enough to pick out some every few days and feed them. Remember to top it up every month or so with a full tub of mealies.

No water or extra heat is needed, just feed them spring greens, carrot, apple etc. take the food out after a day or so as it will start to rot and if the substrate gets wet it'll also rot.

As far as cleaning, I've yet to clean mine but when i do i'll seive it and then put the substrate in another container for a couple of months just to make sure theres no babies.

[Paul B]

HMM

mealworms are the larvae of a beetle so are you intending to keep the beetles to breed them ??.
They probably fly so it isnt going to be easy I would have thought.

P

[LiamRatSnake]

Originally Posted by Paul B

HMM

mealworms are the larvae of a beetle so are you intending to keep the beetles to breed them ??.
They probably fly so it isnt going to be easy I would have thought.

P

I haven't noticed that they fly, not readily anyway. Mine was doing well, until me and my OH went away and they forgot to remove the food. The substrate ended up rotting and it STUNK. Most of them were dead and my little babies (whom I was so proud of, they were about 12mm) were pretty much dead too. I'll start it again soon. It's wierd, I got attached to my colony cos I'd put so much effort into them lol.