Does anyone know how to breed mealworms?

[leoguy1]

Hi. I was wondering if anyone has experience on breeding the mealworm beatle. I've been wanting to breed them so i don't have to go to a store constantly. Just wanting info on how to breed them.

 

[fuzzylogix]

put some ground bran or oats in a tub. toss in meal worms. add carrots, apples, and oranges as feed. put them in a closet. in a couple of months sift out your substrate and you should see a bunch of little worms. it's that easy.

 

[BadKelpie]

There are lots of threads on this. It's easy. Get one of those plastic shoeboxes, dump in some whole wheat flour (or oats, or wheat bran, or cornmeal, whatever), 100 or so mealworms, throw in half a carrot every week and voila. It'll take about 4 months to have feedable sized mealworms, but then it will be a pretty constant supply.

 

[Thorgecko707]

I just saw a breeding kit on amazon. This sounds way better. Now I'm hungry. Do they need a special temp?

 

[fl_orchidslave]

One of our members here has a mealworm breeding setup for sale in the classifieds section under feeders.

 

[leoguy1]

Cool. Thanks guys. It'll realy help.

 

[AMoriarty]

There are lots of threads on this. It's easy. Get one of those plastic shoeboxes, dump in some whole wheat flour (or oats, or wheat bran, or cornmeal, whatever), 100 or so mealworms, throw in half a carrot every week and voila. It'll take about 4 months to have feedable sized mealworms, but then it will be a pretty constant supply.

Do you need that large a number of mealworms to start? I have only 1 gecko and if I could start with a tub of mealies from the store, like 20 or so, would that work? Or does there really need to be 100?

Thanks.

 

[BadKelpie]

Oh, no, it can be whatever you want. Last december, I set out to get my sister's beardie some crickets. No store had any and he was quite hungry. So I bought a tub of 100 mealworms. He ate one and a half and was NOT eating more.

I knew I was going to get a gecko, so I just kept the mealies and made them breed. Still have many of those same beetles, and all sizes of worms. The beetles seem to still be breeding.

So yeah, that's where I got the "100 rule" .

 

[AMoriarty]

Wow, thank you! That will cut down on my trips to the petstore!