i am looking to breed mealworms

[vovo]

i want to be self sufficient on mealworms. i have one gecko how long will it take, how many do i need to start of with, how long will it take.
thanks for any help

 

[OnlineGeckos]

Mealworms take quite awhile to establish, it'll likely take you a few months before you start seeing lil mealworms crawling around. You don't need a whole lot to start, it just takes time more than anything. Buy yourself a bulk 100-500 mealworms, then feed what you need for your gecko, and separate the ones that pupate into a separate bin. Then you just wait until they morph into beetles, then beetles will mate & lay eggs, and more waiting before you see lil mealworms.

 

[Lavodnas]

This is a good place to start for info Guide to Raising and Breeding Mealworms

I made my own modifications to those directions and things have been running smoothly. I have my colony thriving in a spare 10 gallon aquarium I had with a screen top. I bought some rolled oats, put them in the blender, then put a layer 2 inches deep in the aquarium. I put about half of the 500 worms I ordered in the tank and put the rest in a plastic cup with holes in it into the fridge with some of the rolled oats so that I could keep the cycle going as needed. I do not move the beetles or pupae into separate bins since if you keep them fed well and have a plentiful water source in the tank, they will not resort to cannibalism. A good way to help ensure this is to add cardboard egg crating in the tank and put slices of potatoes or carrots right on top of the oats as well as on top of the egg crates. For the most part, the worms will stay on the grain and the beetles will stay on the egg crates. Just as mentioned, it will take some time and the longest wait is waiting for the worms to become large enough to feed to your gecko. This is when having some stored away in the fridge comes in handy to make sure you always have the different stages of their lives active in the tank.

 

[Lavodnas]

More or less, it took about 3 months to get worms big enough to feed my gecko from the time I started everything but I have not had to purchase anymore since.

 

[favrielle]

I started my mealworm farm in March with most of a 500ct mealworm container, and about a month later, put the remains of another container in, about 100ish. As the first itty bitty mealworms started to appear, I moved the beetles to another level in a small plastic organizer drawer set, and then moved the beetles to a new drawer about every 3 weeks thereafter. I also throw any worms that pupate in a feeder dish into the pupae drawer, so I pretty much have all parts of the life cycle going at this point.

Today I'm up to 5 drawers: tiniest mealworms (barely visible), tiny mealworms (1/4" and up), medium mealworms (almost 1/2" and up), pupae, and beetles. I just started the new beetle drawer yesterday. The medium mealworms are finally getting near feeding size, but won't be pupating for several weeks at least, which means my farm is not yet self sustaining. I hope to have it so in the next few months, though.

When planning to start your mealworm farm, remember that once you have it going, you have to be able to produce enough mealworms to 1) feed your gecko AND 2) turn into beetles to produce the next generation. That's probably a lot easier with only one gecko, I imagine.

 

[DrCarrotTail]

I had one bin of mealworms for my gecko and almost never had to buy any but I think two would have been ideal. It does take 3-6 months to get it going tho. The key is to have the beetles for a while so the bin has some mealworms of every size in it and you always have big ones to feed and almost big ones to feed the next time. After about 2 years I had to buy some "new blood" as the worms were getting a bit smaller, which I think may have stemmed from inbreeding.