something exciting and meal worms.

[yoshimi]

The exciting thing is that i decided to capitalize more. No, that's only part of it. What I'm happy about is that I just tong-fed my toad for the very first time. I could only find one white meal worm today but it was a lively one and I kept dropping it. So I held it near Banjo's face, he saw it wiggling, and snapped it up. It was pretty awesome, cuz I'd never tried it before.

Are there advantages to tong-feeding, besides how cute it is? I guess it's one of the only ways I can interact with him. Even tho he doesn't know it's me on the other end of tongs, it still counts. And I have those yellow plastic Zoo Med tongs. I don't think he hurt himself but I could see him darting forward and smashing his face on it. Still, I'm thinking this might open up a whole new world for us. Earthworms!!!

Oh yeah and meal worms.. so yesterday I found a couple shrimp-like things in meal worm cup. I looked up what they were (but not before Banjo had eaten one, oops), and today I found 2 more and put all 3 in new cup with wheat bran and sat it on top of dubia breeding bin. It's just a small experiment to see if they will turn into bugs or not. I have other bins to put bugs into for mating, and another for shrimp things, and another for the meal worms. I could feasibly make this happen. Any tips? Warnings?

[JeffreH]

Tong feeding can be useful to prevent substrate ingestion, which happens pretty easily when feeding earthworms or insects like mealworms who burrow. To be honest, I completely mis-interpreted your post and thought you said you were "tongue-feeding." lmao...the mental image of a mealworm on the tip of someone's tongue being fed to a frog...

The shrimp things I assume are pupae. Frankly, mealworms are one of the most effortless feeder insects to breed. You don't necessarily need to separate pupae from larvae (worms) or from adult beetles. They will all thrive in a single container, couple inches of bran, some salad items from time to time, and kept at room temp. There are certainly ways to increase production, but this is the bare minimum and works just fine. I've allowed mealworm cultures to go for over a year without any feeding or watering and STILL had babies popping out.

[yoshimi]

My tongue would stick to his and he'd try to swallow it and wind up in my mouth. Total mess. I was hoping capitalizing would make my posts easier to read.. Oh well.

I feed him as much as possible from a food dish. Crickets will sometimes jump out, and I do hate the dirt he ingests with them. The meal worms have their own special dish but I'm betting I could put them in salsa bowl (food dish) with no problem. I tried worms from outside when I first got him and he didn't even glance at them. He was super picky back then, so he might go for them now, but tong-feeding would take care of them climbing out of dish before he gets to them, which is why I've been hesitating.

I thought of removing the bugs because I don't have many meal worms left, maybe 100, not sure. I read the adults will sometimes eat the shrimps and that would be an issue for me. Altho that's likely why your colony survived so long without food. I actually put the remaining worms back into fridge, but some of them are starting to curl up, and I don't know if that's a sign they're about to become pupa or not. It looks like it. I could only find that one white worm today, so I'm hoping letting them go dormant then taking them out again will cause some to molt. Unless they're all done molting. Whatever. Watching meal worm youtube videos.

[JeffreH]

Curling is an indication that they will be pupating soon - you'll actually have the best result keeping them warm and out of the fridge if you are trying to encourage them to pupate and molt. Insect growth rate is partly a function of temperature... the higher the temperature to some point, the faster they grow. Keeping them in the fridge will actually decrease the speed at which they molt into new instars and the rate at which they pupate. It'll keep larval worms available to feed longer, but it growth rate will slow substantially.

[yoshimi]

I just wrote a response but I must have clicked "go advanced" cuz it disappeared into the internet ether.

Shortly after putting them in, I took them out of fridge. Figured they're probably all about the same age so if some are pupating, them most are about to. I did want to keep feeding from them, and I was finding lots of newly molted ones yesterday and the day before but only one today. So, when sifting through looking for pupa shrimps, maybe I'll find more white ones, maybe not, but you're correct, nothing will happen in the fridge.

Found a thorough how-to sheet listing temps and humidity levels and time frames. If I keep them on roach bin, I *might* see bugs next week. Maybe. The meal worms are back up on shelf next to crickets. It's warm but not too warm, and they seemed to be doing fine there. As I said before, in my erased comment (which was the very best comment ever), this is kind of exciting.

[yoshimi]

Found two more white meal worms and one more pupa shrimp. Tong-fed again but he had trouble with the 1st of the two. He went for the shadow, for the tongs themselves, and I may have been holding it too tightly. He finally got it, and took the other without issue, but that's enough for now. I'd prefer he got his food on his own, even if it's crawling around in a bowl. I'm definitely still encouraged to try earthworms tho. When I told my bf, he thought I said/meant tongue feeding, too.
I guess I thought it was so cool cuz it was the 1st time I got his attention in a positive way. Or did something that got his attention. Anything else I do, even if I'm delivering food, he hides or at least ducks down. So, it was fun but we'll save it for earthworms.

[yoshimi]

Total of 17 pupa shrimp now! When they're newly pupated and mostly white, I've noticed that's when they do the most wiggling when touched or grasped in tongs. To let potential predators (meal worms, beetles) know not to eat them? More curling in my meal worm cup, but most everybody is hanging around on top. It's very gross to look at if you like eating noodles. No more molting, that I've seen.

My plan (in it's infant stage), is to continue removing pupa as I see them and putting them in the pupa cup on roach bin for warmth, and moving any beetles that appear into a larger bin. Then when I start to see little visible meal worms, move the beetles into another bin just like the first. And when I start seeing meal worms in that bin, hopefully the ones in 1st bin will be big enough to strain out into a deli cup like I have my meal worms in right now. I have tons of deli cups, but surface area won't suffice for beetles, I think. Then I can move beetles back into 1st bin, and unless it spirals completely out of control, keep it going. Sounds ok?

[yoshimi]

The 1st of my pupa shrimp has turned into a beetle! Here's an up and comer: And here's Mr Beetle in his new home:Right now he's munching a carrot chip. 6 days at a high temp, they were right.

[yoshimi]

My baby meal worms hatched! Don't know when, tried not to look at beetles much, but some are a decent (tho small) size already, and others are still tiny-ish, mostly on bottom where eggs were laid.

Only took a million years (a month).

[fish4all]

If you really want to get the most meal worms from breeding separating is going to do that. I used to raise them and have done so off and on for about 10 years. I separated the pupa, (shrimp alien things) from the larva, (the worms) and the beetles all in separate containers. I kept all of them in plastic shoes boxes. By putting plastic canvas down I was able to prevent the beetles from eating the eggs.

The cannibalism is more from a lack of moisture than hunger. If I kept plenty of veggies in a bin I could get okay results without separating them but still nothing compared to really trying and separating them all.

It only took about 6 months to get my 100 starter colony to about 80,000 or so. They almost filled a 1 pound coffee can when I separated them.

If you ever get really adventurous try King Mealworms, a lot more work to get them to pupate and won't breed as fast but can still raise a ton of them in a short time. And the little shrimp alien pupa are so cool at 4x the size.

[yoshimi]

I've been giving them carrot chips on a plastic lid and only removing (and freezing) carrots if they got moldy. They still eat each other tho. Think they might be laying eggs in carcasses but I dunno. Ghastly things, I don't want to know. This was mostly an experiment as I don't really like feeding them to my toad unless they're newly molted, and when the ones I had started to pupate, I just went with it. When pupa turned to beetles, I put them in a small sterilite box with wheat bran, some flattened out pieces of toilet paper tube for cover, with 3/4 of sides covered in paper (for added darkness), letting them do their raping and mauling and egg laying. I can still see some unhatched eggs at the bottom. I'm sort of hoping the beetles I still have (maybe 20-30? i dunno) will just die off. I can't knowingly facilitate their deaths, so I keep feeding them.

Gave Banjo (my toad) 3 or 4 baby meal worms this afternoon. I know she likes them, but I recently had a poop scare where I didn't think she was going and all she'd been eating was european nightcrawlers and a few baby dubia. She pooped tho (yay!) so a few tiny ones, plus the calcium dusted nightcrawler earlier, shouldn't pose much of a risk of impaction. So the superworms or whatever they're called, are out, due to their size and her size.

Between the remaining crickets that just won't die and my roach bins, I just don't have the room for more bug love.

Happy that it worked tho, thought it'd take longer to see little baby meal worms.

[JeffreH]

If you ever get really adventurous try King Mealworms, a lot more work to get them to pupate and won't breed as fast but can still raise a ton of them in a short time. And the little shrimp alien pupa are so cool at 4x the size.

Just to clarify - these are Zophobas morio that Christopher is talking about; more frequently known as "superworms". Only interjecting here because the often marketed 'giant mealworms' and sometimes 'king mealworms', are actually feeder mealworms (tenebrio molitor) that have been given an insect growth hormone. If you buy these, they often do no pupate due to the added hormone, and there may be health implications if fed to your pet (they are best used as bait for fishing). Anyway, make sure you get Zophobas morio, superworms which are also sometimes sold incorrectly as king mealworms = )

[yoshimi]

That's what I assumed, and referred to them as such. Good to note tho.

[fish4all]

Carrots may not be enough moisture to stop the mauling. I tried carrots because they were easy and didn't add much excess moisture. I still used them but I started adding leaf lettuce and other leafy greens and they thrived.

And thank you Jeff, I often forget to make sure to add real names. King mealworms is the term I have used to try and avoid confusion with supers and other genetically enhanced types. Unfortunately the marketer of the worms sometimes don't think about a person wanting to breed them or simply don't care.

[Mentat]

Hi Crystal! Feeding with tweezers is fun and I use the same yellow plastic ones you've got. Couple things to watch is the angle you approach the frog mouth so it gets the food and does not bite into tweezer tips. Also, keep and eye on some of the more aggressive frogs. I caught my African Bullfrog targeting my hand a couple times instead of the food on tweezer tip !

[Sunshine]

I had to learn this the hard way...With my pacman

[yoshimi]

So I decided to move the beetles out, did it the hard way, putting them in an empty tub of whipped cream with some wheat bran, and raking them out a cpl at a time with a plastic fork. Threw their carrot chips in there with em and they swarmed it, so I'm thinking they may indeed have been eating the eggs or even the newly hatched meal worms. Many more beetles left then I expected.
But the real surprise was once they were out, how many meal worms of various sizes I had. Holy hell. I moved THEM from the original bin to a quart size deli cup, added some paper to top, blotted off and added some carrot chips, and stuck them back where I used to keep meal worms before they pupated. When I wasn't keeping them in the fridge. Put the beetles back in the original bin, added more wheat bran, carrots, and put them back to carry on. Took care of the space issue. I have a corridor of bugs. Would make a nice book shelf or pantry, but no, it's bugs. And treated water.
Anyway, I didn't spill anything all over the floor. Not this time. I did that with the pupa cup. Could have been worse.

I don't see them moving around in the deli cup, not yet. Lots of room, but they're small, and I know that if I look away for a week, when I look back it'll be the worst cup of lo mein ever. Their little sheds ended up in there too, and surely some eggs. If they eat the unhatched eggs, then so be it.

[yoshimi]

They seem to like paper. Quite a few came up to cling to it this morning. Now I can see them more clearly in container, as bran settled. Some I probably can't see, which is a little unnerving. Going to need a bigger container...



Fed a few to Banjo, that were feasting on carrot chip. Washed them down with an earthworm. They're so teeny, I'm not concerned with whether they were freshly molted or not.

Beetles are back to humping. Alright then.