who's going back to mealies?

[daniellebluetoo]

I've been thinking about this a LOT since the mealworm fiasco started, and even more now that we know the cause.

I WAS buying mealies from a big supplier on the west coast. I always fed something else to suppliment, usually crix, until I was recomended by a great vet to feed roaches more and worms/grubs a WHOLE lot less. I settled on the turk roach last spring.

After mealies became almsot non-existant as feeders, I've been using supers and roaches with the occasional crix.

I have to tell you, I HATE crix, and supers are a close second, they smell and are huge and a lot of my geckos won't touch the adults, not to mention they are pretty $spendy$ compared to the roaches or mealies.....

SO, who is going back?
Who's not?
AND why?

AND, what's for dinner?>

lol, I mean what are you feeding now>?

AND for those of you who ARE going back to mealies, are you afraid of this happening again, and what precautions are you taking?

Inquiring minds want to KNOW!

THANKS! Danielle

 

[Kristi23]

I started breeding my own mealworms and I hope that will keep me from having problems. I can already see hundreds if not thousands of tiny ones already. I also feed roaches which we have started breeding. I'm hoping to only have to buy feeders for another month or so and then we should have enough of our own.

 

[HepCatMoe]

hey kristi, how big are your feeder colonies that they are self sustaining?

 

[EvoDave101]

well im in the UK so i dont think we have any problems

im starting to breeding mealworms at a small scale just as a little project to see how easy it is

 

[KelliH]

I'm sticking to crickets, superworms, and pinky mice.

 

[Kristi23]

I started with 1000-2000 mealworms kept in a drawer that I didn't use to feed. If I had to guess, I have a few hundred beetles right now. I just added a 3rd and 4th drawer. I moved the beetles to a new drawer and kept their old bedding full of eggs/little worms by themselves. I have one drawer full of beetles, one with pupae, and one with worms that I"m waiting to pupate. I'd guess and say that I just started this 2 months ago. I have tons of babies and I had some large worms that I pulled out to feed. I was surprised at how quickly it all happened. Not all my geckos will eat the mealworms, so I only go thru a few thousand a month. It shouldn't be too hard to have that many soon. My beetle drawer is full and I'm sure there's already eggs there again.

The roaches have been harder for us to keep up. We got thru a lot of those a month. Our mistake was feeding off the ones we were producing too quickly. It's getting better and we usually have a couple hundred little ones a month right now. I just ordered more females, too. That should help. I'm still buying ones to feed so that the babies have time to get bigger.

 

[hoppslover]

Mealworm shortage never really bothered me. I didnt have that many leos at the time. Plus I had started my colony. I am getting mealies out of the colony now, but I will probably have to supplement my colony for a little while yet with purchased mealworms. I have never fed my leos roaches, and Im not sure if I would want to breed them. Just cant imagine them in my house. Maybe I will change my mind someday. If you had told me a few years ago that I would have a lizard in my house I would have said you are crazy, but after handling my nephews I had to get one. Then another and another and another and now I am up to 6 adults 3 sub adults 2 hatchlings 3 eggs and a red eyed raptor on her way. lol funny how that works.

 

[nats]

I feed both crix and mealies. Mealies for appetizer, crix for the main course, and maybe a waxie for desert!
I have become a pro with handling crix, LOL! and I have no problems with them at all. If you clean out the cage once a week and keep it fairly dry, and have some air circulation, you wont have much smell :main_yes:

 

[thekooliest]

Well I just started feeding those hungry little mouths (just got my gecko in normal terms)...but I have started to breed dubias 2-3 months ago, and they weren't breeding fast. I was about to get more of a heat source, but I looked in one day and there were about a THOUSAND baby nymphs crawling around the food. So I guess it did work...I think in the first 2.5 months i got 10 more babies...and in the last half of a month, the colony doubled. I am happy

 

[mrcsk8ter44445]

Im sticking with superworms and roaches

 

[Kristi23]

This is my beetle drawer. You can see a lot of them and some are under the bedding.

 

[yellermelon]

I have a small colony of mealworms to feed my hatchling geckos. My adults get superworms, and blatta latteralis roaches.

 

[MagicalGecko]

Whoa, I thought my colony was going well until I saw that picture. That's a lot of beetles!

 

[bro paul]

I've done primarily mealies for the past three years, with crickets supplemented about every other week...just for variety (before that I did a lot more mixtures). I mainly used mealies because of their ease. When the mealies became harder to purchase (late this summer) I decided to go to crickets only. I'm not a huge fan of crickets...I hate chasing them around, but I'm SO impressed with how much better my geckos are growing and feeding! I'm pretty sure I'm going to stick with crickets from here on out. They require a bit more work, but overall my geckos are looking a lot better

 

[Alusdra]

I was feeding exclusively mealies off of my own colony- but it happened to hit a egg-only phase right as the shortage happened (I don't think it's related, but possible). So I tried to buy some to tie me over, little luck and when I did I started having problems with one gecko going off feed and ovulating like crazy (not necessarily related but I'm suspicious). Since then I've started breeding dubias. 4/5 geckos love love LOVE the dubias and are more into eating then they have been in years. The last is blind and can only eat mealies put in a specific place in her cage.

So- hopefully with the much decreased demand on my mealie colony I can easily supply this one gecko, which I should think would be fine- it has fed 1-3 geckos well for the past 10-15 years with sparse periods every 3 or so years. And the dubia colony is going great! I've been feeding the males as there seems to be a ton of them, and the geckos seem to have no problem eating them, so... My only concern there would be impaction from all the wings. Everyone seems to be moving along ok, though. Has anyone ever had that problem?

 

[starfire8472]

after all this time my leo wont take mealies anymore, its odd, but he still loves supers

 

[boutiquegecko]

The only mealies I have are from my own small colony which I'm just going to let grow so I can use them as a variety food. We switched to crickets months ago and used them pretty much exclusively until very recently when I started a dubia colony. My guys love the dubias, but since I don't have enough to feed out of, we're doing crickets still.
I generally hate crickets, but have found out that if I keep them in the garage which has constant fresh air circulating, there is almost no smell, compared to when I have kept them inside. Also any escapes are not in the house and the house geckos get a cricket snack I also started keeping empty paper towel rolls in the tank along with the egg carton which makes it easier to catch them and gives them even more room to hide/climb. You just pick up the paper towel roll and shake the crickets into a bag to dust them and then feed.
When our dubia colony is finally large enough to feed out of, I'll prob keep a few crickets on hand just for variety, but not thousands like now. It made more sense money wise to have our own colony of feeders than spending money each month on them.

 

[fallen_angel]

We currently feed super worms and we really prefer them, but we also are breeding our own mealworms. We got 1000 sent to us by a good friend, and so we know the stock is good. We have hundreds of tiny worms and are just waiting for them to get bigger. We will always feed super worms along with our mealworms just because they are so convenient (one gecko only requires 1-2 worms a day, and so 500 worms last a long time).

We absolutely hate crickets, and are paranoid about pinworms with them.


Kristi - your colony is HUGE!! Wow, I'd imagine that that many beetles will yield tens of thousands of worms. Each beetle can lay up to 250 eggs :main_yes: Question, what do you use to give them moisture?

 

[Kristi23]

Just carrots right now. There are some in there, but the beetles are covering them in the picture. I'm hoping to have tons of worms since I still have a lot of eggs left to hatch. My hatchlings are really starting to eat a lot now! I have a feeling that I'll be doubling the amount of worms I go thru right now.

 

[fallen_angel]

Yeah, the little ones sure do eat a lot! How long did it take you to get to that point, with that many beetles?