Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I'm looking into purchasing enough mealworms to form a self-sustaining feed source for my juvenile leopard gecko. I've got a few questions:

1) Where would you recommend I purchase the mealworms.
2) How many mealmorms should I purchase, and how large of a container should I get?

Here's what you should do... Depending on how many mealies you need to produce in a set amount of time. Find a Dollar store or Family Dollar Store around you. Grab 2 or 3 sets of those 4 tiered drawer systems... Thats what I use.. the plastic ones usually from Sterlite. To start off with... I'd get about 2000-3000 mealworms. WormMan.com is pretty good.. or reptilefood.come also. LLLReptile is another thats pretty good as well. Fill the bottoms of the 4 drawers with about 1-2 inches of gutload and toss in the mealies into 2 or 3 of the drawers in one rack. As you get beetles in each drawer.. move them into the 4th drawer left over. Probably fit a couple hundred beetles in there. As you get more you can start on other drawers as well.. Its fairly simple. I clean my whole colony out every couple months and lay in fresh bedding for them.
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Lucien

1.0 Columbian Redtail Boa (BCI)
2.1 Leopard geckos (2 Blizzard and 1 het Blizzard)
0.1 Savannah Monitor
13 rats
12 Gerbils
2 Dogs
3 cats
1 Albino Corey (fish)

1) Where would you recommend I purchase the mealworms.

I personally use Bassetts Cricket Ranch, http://www.bcrcricket.com because they are in my state not far away and have always given be good service in the past. Check a few vendors prices and check how peoples experience with them have been like. Maybe use a vendor that is near you.

2) How many mealmorms should I purchase, and how large of a container should I get?

It all matters how many reptiles you want to feed and how many mealworms it takes to feed them each feeding. Of course, there is no set amount so you can just start out with a certain amount and adjust as needed. I recommend starting with 1-5k mealworms. You can put all 5k worms into a plstic container with 1.5' x 2' bottom space. Use about 1-1.5" of substrate and add more when they eat it up. Collect pupaes as you see them and place into another container with .5-1" of substrate and here they will emerge as beetles. This way, you will have one container of maturing mealworms and another container with pupaes and beetles...and eventually eggs. Every 2-4 weeks move beetles to a new container so you can keep worms of different sizes.

Some extra info on their life cycle.

eggs take 1-2 weeks to hatch
larvas molt about 9-20 times in about 10 weeks
pupae stage is 2-3 weeks
beetle females can lay 500 eggs. so far my beetles are living more than a month, then the process starts again.

I have a little bit of info on mealworms on my website if you want to see. good luck.
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~ Juli ~
www.Polliwog-Design.com

Yeah what they said but I wouldent use wormman.com to slow try reptilefood.com.