Reptile Forum, Reptile Classifieds - CaptiveBred

[Budsteam]

Just a quick tip to share, we have found a very successful way to keep meal worms not just alive but plump and succulent is to add Weetabix drizzled with runny honey to their box. They love it - burrow through the bix and lap up the honey making them a very sweet treat indeed!
No more crusty brown ones (well a lot less).

[garysumpter]

Sweet, thats my breakfast sorted.

Thanks for sharing.

Gary
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[mark_w]

I will try this; I've heard that honey is good for mealies, but not figured out how to give it them...

Cheers,
Mark.

[garysumpter]

A very similar thing is done when breeding waxworms and in my experience it works well!

Gary
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[Insectsunlimited]

Meal-worm is a "nick - name" for the larva of the Darkling beetle & it got it because they live in stored grain (mainly bran meal) & is their staple diet. If kept in trays of bran with just slices of potato (for moisture), they will be perfectly nutritious & healthy although they will eat any prepared grain. Flaked wheat (weetabix) or bran, rolled oats (porridge) etc.
Dogs will eat chocolate but it will cause them to "fit". Pigs are raised on 100% protein to make them grow quickly but they are no more nutritious than one that has grubbed about in a wood living on acorns & fungi. Meal-worms don`t get honey in the wild but there are hundreds of animals that rely on them for all their nutrition.
I am a great believer in just feeding insects their natural food choice. That`s all they get in the wild & are nutritious enough to become a vital food source from birds through to mammals. All these additives are just one step away from genetic modification. Nature knows what it is doing, if insects weren`t nutritious enough in the wild, nothing would eat them. I think you could say "the proof is in the eating".
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Dave Messer @ Insectsunlimited.

It may be the early bird that gets the worm but it`s the 2nd mouse that gets the cheese.

[Rickeezee]

I raise my mealies on wheat bran and give them grated carrot for moisture, thats their lot. I have had good results from this but do dust them when required before feeding them off.

My super morios seem very slow to me to develop and in turn go through the various stages to reproduce. I have read thye need to be singularly kept in small matchbox size containers to encourage pupation, any thoughts on this?
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[Insectsunlimited]

Hi Rick, Yeah, loads of thoughts on this as I`ve been breeding Morio`s successfully for about 20 years... & I still haven`t written up a care sheet for them as it is so rare I get asked about them.
Basically, they are a larva, not unlike most beetle larva, that hatch from eggs deposited in a fallen tree. the young hatch & eat their way into the rotting tree trunk, enclosed all their larval life (if you have ever been bitten by a Morio worm, you know how easy they can draw blood). When they`ve stuffed themselves on enough wood, they chew out a little cavern the size of an acorn, curl up... & pupate. They will not pupate in the open as once a chrysalis, they are defenceless & vulnerable to be eaten by ANYTHING. They must chew into a log before they are happy. In captive breeding, they don`t EVER pupate either... unless you can induce a false sense of security. I do this by getting a little tube that 35mm films come in, pin-prick a few holes in the lid (only pin-prick or they will chew their way out, half fill with bran, pop in 1 fat healthy worm & forget it for about a fortnight, keeping it in the high 80`s F. Have a look after about a fortnight, some will still be moving around(put the lid on these & forget for another 14 days),some will be curled up( good, these are now dormant & metamorphosis has begun) & some will have gone black (discard these as they are dead). Wash the containers out thoroughly & go back to step one. Eventually, they will all curl up &, one day when you look at them... HEY PRESTO... pupa. Much the same as standard meal-worms then... the pupa get darker around the head & start looking like a beetle & in a couple of weeks, break out into a white beetle that will darken over the next 48 hrs until it is a shiny black beetle about 30mm long.
As a wood boring beetle, they will eventually eat their way out of a matchbox. Make sure they are in something they can`t get their jaws into or they will keep eating & stay as a worm. Regards... Dave.
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Dave Messer @ Insectsunlimited.

It may be the early bird that gets the worm but it`s the 2nd mouse that gets the cheese.

[Rickeezee]

Cheers for that Dave, any ideas on cheap supplies of film canister tubs?
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[peaches]

Thanks Dave,
What would be the next step when you have the beetle??

I had found a load this week in a viv, burrowed into a polystyrene rock I made, obviously felt secure in there. Chucked them out though
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[Rickeezee]

I have had a few morio beetles and I placed tham in a tank with bran and egg flats. They laid their eggs and I have quite a few morio worms now, but the process is way slow so shall use the canisters next time round to aid pupation.
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