Meal worm system?

[RocksMama77]

Ok, I have a meal worm colony and it is getting huge. My system now is I have the worms in a bin and I separate the aliens every day twice a day and put them in separate containers. When the morph into beetles I put them in my beetle bin. I also change out my beetles once a month and let the babies get big before putting them with the larger worms. It takes me a good two hours a day to separate and divide. My question is for those of you who have a huge meal worm colony what is your system?

 

[RocksMama77]

Bump!

 

[T-ReXx]

I use a simple 3 drawer system that works out pretty well with minimul effort. I use one of those 3 drawer sterilite setups, the bins are about 16inX16in. The top drawer is for the beetles. I cut out the bottom of this drawer, leaving a 1in margin of plastic, and hot glue a piece of metal(it has to be metal, they will chew through nylon) screening cut to fit to this. In this drawer I put a bit of Pro Geckos gutload, some egg crate, and water source(carrot usually). This is where I keep the beetles. As they lay eggs, they fall through the screen to the drawer below. This is the hatching/growout drawer. I put 1 in of Pro Geckos gutload in this drawer and a couple of pieces of carrot. Once a month, give or take a week or two, I switch this drawer with the third drawer. This is where I keep larger worms. Same setup as the second drawer. Once a month, or whenever I see good sized worms and pupa starting to appear, I take this drawer, sift out the worms and pupa,pick out the pupa and put them into the beetle drawer(usually a couple hundred or so) and store the worms in the fridge to be fed off. Before feeding them off I warm them to room temp and let them feed on the gutload and some carrots for 24 hours.
Problems with this system: yes, some of your baby worms/eggs/pupa will get eaten. This has been a non-issue for me, they produce so many eggs that there are plenty of worms that make it to adult size. You could easily prevent this by storing pupa in a seperate cup until they turn into beetles, and switching drawers more often, but I haven't had a need to do so.
Pros of this sytem: It's easy, and takes little time. All I end up doing is adding carrots to the bins every other day or so, and ocassionally cleaning the beetle bin to remove dead adults and replace with fresh pupa. Sifting worms and storing takes about a half an hour or so once or twice a month.

I have a similar system in a larger step up(using a large sterilite bin with a kitty litter pan that fits the bottom as a "catch drawer" for super worms, and it works well as long as you keep them warm enough. For the super beetles I also provide water crystals as a water source as they need more and are more likely to eat each other. I also keep super pupa seperate in their pupation containers(pill boxes) until they are beetles, as they are much more likely to eat pupa than the mealworm beetles.

 

[acpart]

I have a similar system but am also interested in keeping my time commitment down. I sift through my feeder mealworm colony for feeding purposes and at that time I pick out all the aliens and put them in a separate container. Every time I feed I also pour out the aliens and pick out the beetles. I don't try to find all the aliens in the feeder worms, it's too time consuming, so sometimes I have beetles in with the mealworms. I also sift out the beetles monthly or at least every 6 weeks. That takes time, but it's not that often. I regularly give veggie scraps to the beetles, mealworms and superworms.

Aliza

 

[serialzombie]

The top drawer is for the beetles. I cut out the bottom of this drawer, leaving a 1in margin of plastic, and hot glue a piece of metal(it has to be metal, they will chew through nylon) screening cut to fit to this. In this drawer I put a bit of Pro Geckos gutload, some egg crate, and water source(carrot usually). This is where I keep the beetles.

What size screen do you use?

 

[Landen]

I have a 16 tub rack with 5.5 qt shoe boxes in. I just pick out all of my beetles every 3 weeks or so and move them to a new tub. That way all of my worms are hatched from eggs that were layed at close to the same time which results in my worms all being about the same size. Pretty easy.

 

[tastyworms]

Ok, I have a meal worm colony and it is getting huge. My system now is I have the worms in a bin and I separate the aliens every day twice a day and put them in separate containers. When the morph into beetles I put them in my beetle bin. I also change out my beetles once a month and let the babies get big before putting them with the larger worms. It takes me a good two hours a day to separate and divide. My question is for those of you who have a huge meal worm colony what is your system?

You're definitely doing too much work :main_yes:. The three drawer system that T-Rexx recommended is something many people have luck with.

Use #8 hardware cloth / screen for your sifter. It's called #8 because it has 8 square holes per square inch. Wheat bran will slide right through it with very little effort, and beetles won't. This is how you separate the eggs from the beetles.

If you can get yourself into a situation where the mealworms are all about the same age, then you won't have to worry about picking out pupae, because they will all pupate about the same time.

Put some egg crate into your pupae container. The beetles will climb up on it, and make it easier to move them to the beetles container.

 

[KingMixer]

The top drawer is for the beetles. I cut out the bottom of this drawer, leaving a 1in margin of plastic, and hot glue a piece of metal(it has to be metal, they will chew through nylon) screening cut to fit to this. In this drawer I put a bit of Pro Geckos gutload, some egg crate, and water source(carrot usually). This is where I keep the beetles. As they lay eggs, they fall through the screen to the drawer below. This is the hatching/growout drawer.

Would the screen work if you use oats as a medium for the beetles?:main_huh: