Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello everyone,
I'm new posting here, and am a regular visitor of the ball python forum and maintain a nice small group of them. I'm thinking about getting back into raising leos. I used to raise normals and hypos a few years back (nothing outstanding), but am amazed at how beautiful some of the newest morphs are! I'm not really interested in making $$$, I would just like to produce some of these awesome geckos.
My question is, how do most of you maintain your mealies? Do you refrigerate them and warm them up once in a while to feed them? I'm sure you gut load them before feeding to the leos too. Or, do you breed them and maintain enough to feed all of your leos?
I very much appreciate your responses!
Thanks,
Glenn

I keep my meal worms in the fridge all the time. If you dont they will turn into beatles. My Anols love the beatles but my Geckos wont touch them. I day the meal worm container out of the frige at feeding time. Place it on a table in my snake room untill it gets to room temp and then put the meal worms 1 by 1 on the calcium dish in the enclosure. When one of them eats one I put in another and so on and so forth. I dont do anything special with the worms, just buy them at Walmart in the Outdore section and pop em in the frige when I get home. The meal worms rolling around and walking through the supliment dish shjould provide the Gecko with enough supliment when it eats the worm. My oldest Gecko is Kirmy "BELOW" 1.5 years now and no aperent problems with this method.

My Research and Collection "New server"

I don't refrigerate mine, but I do raise them in a cool room [closet].

I keep them in a corn meal substrate, and feed fresh veggies to sustain the colony. When lizard feeding time comes, I use a flour sifter to dig out the mealies and put them in a bowl where they get dusted with vitamins and calcium.

Un-eaten mealies that turn to beatles go back into the colony, along with quite a bit of left over herpivite...

Good luck,

-----
Dan

I used to keep them in the fridge, but I noticed I never gutloaded them enough.

So I went to wal-mart and bought 2 small plastic trashcans and 1 wire strainer. I nest the trashcans together and dump in some food for gutloading. Then I dump in a few hundred mealies and put some bread, and veggies on top.

When I want to feed my leos I just take the bottom trash can and rest the wire strainer on top. then i remove whatever bread and veggie pieces and then dump the gutload and mealworms through the wire strainer.

The gutload falls through the strainer and the mealworms don't. Then just get the mealies you need and dump the rest back in the gutload for another day.

Don't skip the gutloading if you don't believe me just try this buy some mealies and put half in a small container with some gutload and a piece of potato, and put the other half in the fridge. Two days later warm the fridge ones up and compare them to the gutloaded ones. I swear they are like twice the size and way more lively.

You're input is very much appreciated! What I would like to know is how do you maintain an order of a few thousand or so (a couple months worth)? Do you just let them breed, sorting through the beatles to get the worms when feeding? Or, can you refrigerate them long term and take them out ocassionally to feed them. I'm pretty sure I have read in the past that you can do this, but don't remember where.
Thanks again,
Glenn

If you refridgerate them for a few weeks you should give them some food and water before putting them in for that long. Just offer them some potato, carrots and greens for 24hrs. then take them out as you need and gutload and feed. Also if kept at room temp most of your mealies will not metamorph for a few weeks but that depends on age.