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mealworms how long can they live?

MatNga Jul 02, 2003 03:24 PM

i only buy a 50 count of regular melies a week and mebbe a 50 count of giants every two weeks.

my 50 gram girl gets to giants and little 15 gram boy gets the regualrs.

my question is is it ok to just drop the 50 regulars in a butter tub with gut load and keep them at room temp for the week since he eats 10 or 15 day or should i just pull out 10 or 15 every day and toss them into the gut load container.

also i am considering ordering a bulk order from some place if i just pull 50 out for the week i can just refer the rest untill the next week but how long can they live in the refer?

thanks mat

Replies (6)

Cleopatra Jul 02, 2003 03:44 PM

Mealies live a while, and I have just given up refridgerating them unless I have a whole lot of them (over 500). I like gutloading them since they arrive because it gives them a chance to grow and become healthier while they are waiting to be fed. I own two leos as well and they eat about 100 mealies every week...so normally I buy in 100-200 counts.
You mentioned "giants"...do you mean superworms??? Giant mealworms are mealies that have been given growth hormones to double their size...this cannot be good for the leos and I suggest that you drop them from your feeding plan because of this. My adults do well on a diet of mealies...

Cleo
1:1 leos (6 eggs cooking)

MatNga Jul 02, 2003 03:55 PM

that is what i do. i just put them in a butter tub for the week full of gutload. the giant mealworms i am refering to are not superworms tey are in a container i get and it says giant meal worms and they are mebbe 2 inches long as oppesed to the container that says mealworms.

yu say its fine for adults to eat just those little 1 inch things?

my female is a picky eater and its hard to get her to eat superworms right off although she likes them she likes them when she wants them and on her eating schedual and it's hard to keep those big things in her cage without them crawling all over the place

Cleopatra Jul 02, 2003 04:00 PM

Yup...most of us here feed the mealies...mind you, they eat alot of them...my leos sometimes eat 15 a night. A leo doesn't necessarily need large insects, they just need a good supply of the smaller ones. The Superworms are good for leos...but the Giant mealworms aren't...they are different. Supers are naturally big and fast moving...giants have been changed by hormones...unhealthy to them, unhealthy to the leo thats eating them. If the package says "Giant Mealworms" on it...don't get it. The cups of Superworms will not be in the frige like the mealies and the giants (since they will die of the cold).

Cleo
1:1 leos (6 eggs cooking)

MatNga Jul 02, 2003 04:05 PM

thanks heh i have a 15 gram baby eating about 15 a nite. i think if my female wasn;t so picky she would eat 20 of em

mat

Lucien Jul 02, 2003 04:28 PM

*hehe* Only 15?? I'm feeding off about 600 mealies a week for 6 geckos.. 4 hatchlings and 2 adults... Glad I produce in the thousands... Plus my superworms are breeding now.. yay.. took me forever..And my largest hatchling.. (not quite 3 months old and already almost 7 inches. He's huge... So much so that I had to seperate him from his clutchmate so the other got food as well.. I can already tell he's a male.. And gonna be a good one.. now if I could only get some non-related females to breed him to... Blizzards (He's a Blizzard)... or Albinos's would be great.. but not for a while is that in the plans.

Josh06 Jul 02, 2003 05:03 PM

Did they morph into beetles?? I have a colony of supers and they never morphed into beetles but I have been getting babies. I thought that like mealies they would become beetles and then reproduce, but mine have been reproducing in the worm stage. I have the proof of it too, I always find a bunch of little miniature supers in there with the larger adult ones, so I pick them out and then they grow into larger ones, maybe they just arent supposed to become beetles???
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Josh
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