Reptile Forum, Reptile Classifieds - CaptiveBred

[mark68]

I was asked by PM to explain how I breed morio worms (giant mealworms/Zoophobas morio). Stupidly I suggested in another thread I was good at it ! So I thought it made sense to tell you all rather than just the one person. I have a very large collection of lizards and breed ALL my own livefood. I think currently around 8/9 species.

Get hold of good large fully grown morio worms. To keep them alive and healthy put them in a tray with a 3-10cm of SLIGHTLY damp wood shavings or coir or similar substrate. Feed them slices of veg/fruit and little cereal (oats/wheatabix,chicken pellets etc). Generally when you buy them they will be in poor shape. Once they have been cared for properly for a week, seperate around 100 of them, each one into a yogurt pot, film canister waxworm tub or similar with a little of the mix used for the tray. After around 4 weeks each worm should have turned into a beetle. Then put these beetles into a plastix box with 3-10cm of the mix mentioned above. Again feed the beetles like above for the worms. A little bit of dampened cat pellets of piece of cooked egg helps the beetles produce well. In this box put in pieces of natural wood with the bark still on, that have lots of cracks in it. Virgin Cork bark is good. Old pieces of wood that have dried and cracked are good. I use vine wood. Or get some untreated timber and cut very thin lines into it. In these gaps the beetles lay there eggs. Keep the whole set up damp After a week put the beetles into a new box with fresh wood and substrate. Within 7 days these eggs in the old box will hatch into tiny worms. Keep changing the box over for new and in the third week put the oldest substrate with worms into a tray like a cat litter tray. So eventually you have
1. box with beetles
2. box with subtrate and wood with eggs hatching... start to feed with small pieces of fruit and tiny amounts of cereal
3. tray with 1-2 week old worms (keep substrate damp)
4. tray with 2-3 week old worms
and so on.... up to 10. tray with fully grown worms. At all stages of life, keep them at 24-28c .

Should you breed your own livefood...??? Generally I would say NO !!!

Because unless you have time (which you could be spending with your reptiles), the ability to be consistent (missing out on one spraying of the wood pieces might mean the eggs dry out and don't hatch), and a big collection it isn't worth it. If you don't do it properly it will all be a waste of time. Unless you enjoy breeding livefood like i do, don't bother. Life is just too short.

[mwreptiles]

Thanks for all that good info.

Question, how large are the wood shaving pieces? Are we talking that small mammal bedding? And do you have to sit there for hours picking worms out of it? Do you have a system for that?

I know when I was breeding Sowbugs I just laid a wet piece of paper towel over the substrate all the time to collect them.

Ok, I see that personally I've been keeping the adult Zophobas beetles way too dry and on an inferior substrate.

I've turned probably a thousand Zophobas into beetles and never got eggs out of any of them. Frustrating!!!

I'd like to add that for holding the larvae as they pupate the plastic small parts storage containers you get at the craft store for say.. $3 work really well. And you can stack them....

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41OvG8pUZtL._AA280_.jpg

Here's an annoying question..

Lets say you took an average batch of in good health Zophobas and then let them do their thing using your system.

How many baby worms, roughly, would you expect to get using your number of 100 starter worms?

- Mike

[mark68]

No probs Mike

Before you put fresh wood shavings/coir into the breeding box you need to sieve it to take out larger sized pieces. The stuff I use is wood chips that vary in size from 2-10mm. Since I know the sieve I use will hold the mealworms in it without them going through the mesh. If I sieve the wood chips and only use what passes through for the beetle colony then later it is simple to sieve the worms without having to pick through large wood chips. The larger pieces are used for mouse bedding.

I can't answer your question exactly. But if you have 100 beetles which you should be able to create from approx 110 worms or less, then you should be able to breed with a little experience around 1/2 kilo per week. Possibly more. Don't ask me how many larvae are in 1/2 kilo ! I start a new adult colony every six months. I keep both of them (the beetle colonies) going for a while, dumping the old beetles after 8 months approximately of breeding.

You can read the best advice about breeding any livefood, but the best results are obtained always when you have more experience with the cultures.
I forgot to say that one great thing about these larvae, is that they can be stored en masse easily. I can't easily breed them now as I don't have mains electric. But I have full grown larvae now that were hatched in July that will not be used until April or even a couple of months later.