Tips for mealworm farming?

[Nicole01]

This is my first go at it and I wonder if anyone has any tips? I currently have them in a 20 gal glass tank as the plastic bins were molding at the bottom after a few days.

I stir it up daily to keep the air flow and I have no cover. In feeding fresh wheat bran, fresh rolled oats and carrots.

I'm waiting for our 10gal tank to be returned from the neighbor, but it looks like that's not happening anytime soon. I bought 2 sets of worms from the same seller for a big colony. One was 250 and another was 1,000 worms for $10 a piece(shipping included). The worms came very healthy and 100% alive.

The downside is they reside in our basement, which is a little cooler. My husband is NOT happy at all that I bought these in the first place.

Am I doing this right? I have about a dozen beetles in a weeks time and many are morphing into the beetle stage.

Thanks.

Oh, I love that scoop I bought for cleaning. It only cost just a couple bucks.

 

[Kelsie2290]

http://www.sialis.org/raisingmealworms.htm
is a really good website on raising them. One thing about keeping them in the basement, their growth is very temperature dependent, and depending how cool it is down there, you might slow them down more than you want.

 

[Nicole01]

I just put a nice thick blanket under the aquarium, so the aquarium is not directly on the floor. I have a few beetles already, so maybe I'll transfer them into a smaller container. The one thing I worry about is mold with the smaller container.

I have plenty of food. I just checked and there are at least 100 that are morphing into beetles right now. I just sifted through the wheat bran and added more oats. They prefer the oats over the wheat bran.

 

[Nicole01]

Oh, hubby says no way in heck that they are coming upstairs.:/. I guess I'll just have to wait a little longer for reproduction.

 

[Kelsie2290]

Haha. Guess he wouldn't mind if they got really cold, like into the freezer cold. Unless your basement is really damp, as long as your bedding is dry, and you watch that the vegetables/fruit that you feed for water don't get moldy and aren't in real contact with the bedding (website has a bunch of suggestions on how to feed), it really doesn't seem to mold.

 

[Nicole01]

I separated the pupa and the beetles.


There's about 100 pupa just after a week.

Here's the aquarium I keep them in. I took this photo a couple days ago before separating the pupa and beetles.

 

[cjqsmom]

Oh, I love that scoop I bought for cleaning. It only cost just a couple bucks.

I have a scoop just like this that I use to sift the poo out of my coop. My coop is sand/rock

 

[Nicole01]

I must be doing something right. I've had the worms 1-2 weeks and look at all the pupa! There's got to be about 150-200 in there.