Mealworms

[managermania]

Since I work a lot with BCCB's I decided to try my hand at breeding mealworms about 4 months ago. I am using a 20 gallon aquarium. I started with about 500 mealworms in the tank. After a long while I had a ton of beetles in the tank, but no mealworms. Patience is certainly not one of my virtues.

2 weeks ago I was going to scrap the idea and started to go clean out the tank. Low and behold the tank was filled with tiny meal worms at the very bottom of the substrate. There must be thousands in there now.

I now have a new 3 tiered system for breeding them so that I can move them to different containers for the different stages of development. They should be pretty good for the birds as I have been feeding them bran and oats as a substrate as well as fresh fruits and vegetables every other day. I also put bird feeding formula in the substrate. I figure it has to be pretty good for everyone involved.

I have found that it is well worth the wait and does not take too much time, space, and energy to raise mealworms. The odor from the aquarium is not awful, but I am not sure I would do it in my kitchen or other living areas. I raise mine in my basement bird room.

[Perfex]

Sounds like fun! Hope you've got ALOT of hungry birds. Do the birds eat the beetle too, or are they too large?

[wellingtoncdm]

Chase, you can refrigerate them to slow down the growth if you get too many at once. The last forever. just warm them and feed them once and a while.

[cindy]

Chase here is a really good guide to mealies.... http://www.sialis.org/raisingmealworms.htm