Superworm question

[steve905]

I put my supers in their respective torture chambers and turned them into beetles. I currently have @ 20 beetles. They are in a tub with wheat bran and water crystals and a piece of carrot. I believe they are all getting busy since the are playing pile on each other. How long till I get worms? From what I've listed am I missing anything?

Thanks

 

[Landen]

I put my supers in their respective torture chambers and turned them into beetles. I currently have @ 20 beetles. They are in a tub with wheat bran and water crystals and a piece of carrot. I believe they are all getting busy since the are playing pile on each other. How long till I get worms? From what I've listed am I missing anything?

Thanks

3-4 weeks you should see very small worms. I move my beatles to new bran everytime i see new worms. That keeps each yeild the same size. Otherwise you'll have a variation of sizes in one tub. which works too, but is harder to sort through.

 

[steve905]

What do you raise them in? Wheat bran or oatmeal? I've also got another 30+ super in their torture chambers to make more beetles. How many do you suggest to keep a good sized group going?

Thanks

 

[jfreels]

I'm currently keeping mine in the pro geckos pro gutload. So far it's working out really good. And as Landen said, it will take a few weeks to see worms, they are very very small.

I keep my colony in the plastic drawer system they have at Wal-mart. It's like $12 and has three drawers. Seems to be going good so far.

 

[Imperial Geckos]

I'm currently keeping mine in the pro geckos pro gutload. So far it's working out really good. And as Landen said, it will take a few weeks to see worms, they are very very small.

I keep my colony in the plastic drawer system they have at Wal-mart. It's like $12 and has three drawers. Seems to be going good so far.

Using the pro gut-load, is it easy to sift the worms out with a regular kitchen sifter? Or does it clump together like grinded up oatmeal?

 

[jfreels]

well I don't have any mealworms in that bin yet. The first offspring are still in with the wheat bran/oats I made about a month ago. I do however check for baby mealworms and have not noticed any clumps and a regular kitchen sifter would work. It's ground up pretty good....a lot like the flukers gut load.

 

[Landen]

I keep all my worms on regular old wheat bran with great success. I know there are special mixes out there but why fix it if it's not broken. My worm colony(couple hundred beatles) probably takes just about as much time as tending to the gecko's themselves. 50 beatles will produce about 1000-2000 worms every 4 weeks. By the time that the first batch is full grown you'll have 3-4 different groups of them growing up. Supers are not as easy as mealworms. Most people have trouble getting the worms to make it through the pupua stage. Good luck to you and remember to keep them fed or they'll eat each other.

 

[jfreels]

Here's a close up pic of the pro geckos pro gutload with some beetles...

 

[Designer Geckos]

Wheat has been shown to be mildly toxic in humans, so perhaps it has some adverse health consequences in worms as well, and in turn, our geckos. We prefer to use a combo of organic oat bran and pro geckos gutload. Seems to work great for us.
I'm not quite sure about the wheat issue but we prefer to stick with the oat bran as a substrate. Oat bran is cheap and you can buy it in bulk at any health food store.

 

[jfreels]

Wheat has been shown to be mildly toxic in humans

I can't find anything reputable with google. Where did you hear that?

 

[Taquiq]

Wheat has been shown to be mildly toxic in humans

Yeah I can't find anything either.