Posted by:
phwyvern
at Tue Dec 16 16:39:02 2003 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by phwyvern ]
Well,
This is an update on my previous post. I know I read that it cantake 5-6 weeks to get results. It's been 25 days now since I started my first waxworm culture. And I am actually quite amazed at the results.
I had been checking the jar every few days since I first put the eggs into medium. After many many days, I finally noticed a single nearly microscopic waxworm (pinhead cricket size) moving around on one particular mound of medium. Great... the eggs were finally hatching!
Several more days went by and I checked the jar again. Ack. Still only that one single worm moving about on that same mound as before but it was noticably larger in size (about 1/4" now) and you could see a fine silk nest now covering his little mound. I was bummed. I thought dang.. all those eggs and only ONE hatched. oh well. This was my first time raising waxworms, maybe I just got unlucky with a batch of infertile eggs. I put the jar back up on the shelf. That was about a week ago.
Today I figured I'd check up on my poor lonely waxwormie. I wasn't looking when I reached to the back of the shelf I had the jar sitting on and picked it up. I nearly dropped the dang thing...that glass jar was HOT to the touch! It was almost like it had just come out of the dishwasher it was that hot. I looked into the jar and it was just covered in silk and hundreds of worms of all sizes were all over....from tiny hatchling worms to fatter almost half grown worms.
How in the world could they have exploded in population & size in just a week's time? I swear when I checked the jar the week before all I saw was that one single solitary worm moving around...nothing else.
I had to add more medium to jar that's for sure...a large chunk of what I had in there was pretty much gone. I certainly need to get more jars setup to divide the culture between as the one quart jar I started is not going to hold all of these worms much longer.
I would say this experiement is turning out just fine after all. 
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PHWyvern
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Update! - phwyvern, Tue Dec 16 16:39:02 2003