Mealworms

[mkearsley]

I just bought a few mealworms to try out a breeding program. I saw a thread on here about raising them in a 3-tiered plastic bin. The adults are in the top, with a screen under them, the eggs drop down to the 2nd bin, where they grow to mealworms. I think that there was some more details, but I can't remember. The thread had some excellent pictures of what it is supposed to look like & how to build it. Does anybody know what thread I'm talkin about? I looked through a whole bunch of them, but they all talked about having the mealworms in one large container...... I guess I'll start out with that until I can find the 3-tiered idea......
thanks

 

[Arielle]

I'm interested in this too. Red wriggles are in a 3 tiered system or a storage tote. Meal worms sound like a good possibilty for us to raise as a supplement. Does anyone know about this post?

 

[Gallo del Cielo]

I think I remember the thread to which you referred. Are you wanting to use the three-tiered bin so that you can separate stages? I recall that was what the poster was doing. Cannibalism rates in standard mealworms (T. molitor) are so low (providing that nutritional needs are met) that separating them won't add a whole lot to the rate of population growth. Separating larvae, pupae and beetles is a fun thing to do to observe their development but won't give you many more worms for the effort. Now having said that, you could theoretically grow three times as many worms in a three tiered container than you could a single container with the same footprint size, because of the three-fold increase in surface area. You might have some additional issues with moisture, depending on your environment, that you wouldn't have with an open-topped single container.

 

[mkearsley]

I was wanting to separate the stages just to make it easier to get the mealworms without messing with the beetles.