help with meal worm colony

[adam&nikki]

well ive had my colony for about 2 months now and well its not working very well i started with 1000 mealies and now have about 200 beatles ive feed them every other day eith carrots and apples and other fruits and veg they are on quaker oats ( i couldnt and cant find wheat bran ) any ways i dnt have any mealies and its very frusterating can any one help

 

[RocksMama77]

Go to vitacost.com they have awesome deal on wheat bran. I tried mine on quaker oats and they never did good. But also give it some time. I started with two beetles and now about 5 months later I am into my 3rd or 4th generation and have over 1000.

 

[acpart]

You may have mealies but they may be really tiny. It's going to be very hard to separate them out if you have quaker oats; something powdered is better. Consider buying something like gutload from progeckos.com. The mealies will also develop faster in a warmer area. If it's at 68 degrees room temp it could take months.

Aliza

 

[Kellyr]

With that many beetles you may have to rotate or switch containers more frequently to prevent them from eating the eggs. Also those little worms take forever it seems like to grow at all, then they reach medium size and grow like weeds. Oh yeah, and temps should be around 78

 

[RainbowGecko]

I agree with RocksMama77. I once experimented, and filled one of my 100 or so mealworm containers with oats, and that container did very poorly compared to the others filled with wheat bran. Wheat bran is readily available, around here at Winco, Sprouts, etc. You may want to take at least half of your beetles and put them in some wheat bran.

 

[RoninSTi]

+1 for the progecko gutload solution. My mealies and beetles LOVE it.