Reptile & Amphibian Forums

hello, i'm looking for some sort of feeder insect (or other?) for my beardy and possibly my red tegu. i HATE crickets, and they really don't do well in the humidity here in central florida (and i wont keep them inside). i've heard some roaches are good, but what about earthworms? are they very nutritious? i think they'd be easy to grow in a compost heap. does anyone feed the san diego zoo diet to their beardies? (it's made up of ground turkey, bone meal, fruit, and suppliments) this would be a nice cheap alternative. thanks for your help. i hate constant feeder maitenance, and the constant smell in the garage. if i leave the feeder cricket cage outside for like 1 night, something (usually ants) gets into it and eats them all.

Try using super worms(zophobas)it's the only insect that I feed to my adults. I used the SDZ diet for my Blue Tegus, but don't think it is a good idea for Beardies. They are not true carnivores like tegus, though many tegus have a somewhat omnivourous diet.
good luck
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Bill DiFabio
Azteclizard.com
Email Me

i really like keeping mealworms. many people don't like them as feeder insects because they have been known to cause impaction (they have a chintinous skin that can clog BDs up), but i keep about 5000 at a time and it's easy to pick out the newly shed ones. i sometimes get lazy and just put a bunch of random worms in the dish, but my BDs are big enough where a few unshed worms won't do them any harm.

as for the set-up, i put 5000 or so in a slightly larger than shoebox-sized plastic container with the lid off that i picked up at the dollar store. they live in bran substrate (so do my lizards), which is ultra cheap, and they just get veggie scraps (orange rinds, apple cores etc) or potato slices.

if you don't feed them fast enough, mealworms will pupate and become beetles, which is okay since they eventually mate and lay eggs in the substrate or potato slices...*bling!* more mealworms!

anyways, just thought i'd give you my take on this since i hate keeping crix as well. i find the superworms a little harder to keep, since mine always end up cannibalizing each other for moisture, and cockroaches are stinky, no matter what kind you get. plus, it seems like most reptiles and amphibians will eat mealworms! (i've fed them to roughskin newts, BDs, skinks, leopard gekos, toads, frogs etc...)

i order my mealworms from sunshinemealworms.com and have had no complaints. they send them pretty small sometimes, but they get big after a few days of feeding.

-ming
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your any problem is easily solved with a bit of liquid teflon. I would guess that you have your cricket cage up on a 4 leg support. take a bit of the liquid teflon and smear it on all the legs of the cage. ants and other pets can't climb up the teflon, so can't get into the cage. the other option is to put the legs into buckets of kerosene. Ants can easily traverse water with a group because of the high surface tension, but kerosene has a very low surface tension, so the ant "bridge" will fall right through and drown.

Wouldn't the fumes from kerosene be harmful to the crickets anyway, not to mention a big fire hazard?

If you can soak the additional cost you could raise silkworms. I am not sure if they can thrive in high humidity but I don't think they mind humidity in the 60 to 70's....

Other than the rather limited types of food you can feed the silkworms (ie mulberry leaves or prepared silkworm food)they are easy to keep. They don't tend to move around lots so if you put in alot of egg cartons or those paper coffee holders, it makes it easy to pick up the trays, gently shake out the poo back into the container and put them aside. Pick out any stray silkworms from teh bottom of the container then you can just dump out all the poo and shed skins. Then put everything back into the container (except the poo of course).

Silkworms have no to little smell and what smell they do have is pretty much the same smell as their food which is rather mild. I don't yet have personal experience on how easy it is to breed silkworms but plan to do so soon, just need to buy a large enough supply of worms first (hopefully next month at the reptile show i am going to). For more information about silkworms, try the following site:

www.mulberryfarms.com