Reptile & Amphibian Forums

i was reading about other people doing this and i was interested in it. i was wondering, well, how do you do it?
what do you keep the mealies in?
and the details?
thanx

Im working on starting one too. Go to drgecko.com, there is a lot of good info on breeding mealies there.

I can tell you how i have mine set up, its pretty much the same way it says to do it on the drgecko website, but its only been set up for a few hours, so who knows if its gonna work. Lol.

I have two rubbermaid containers. One is for the larva, eggs, and beetles. And the other is for the pupae (the alien looking things). The bottoms of the rubbermaids are lined with rolled oats, wheat germ, wheat bran and some fresh veggies. There are a couple of chunks of potato in each container as well, for water. I have a deeper layer of substrate/food in the tank for the beetles and the larva as they like to burrow, and the eggs will be laid in the substrate and will hatch from them. I have a much thiner layer in with the pupae because they dont seem to move much at all or eat anything, plus the thinner layer makes it easier to tell when they have turned into beetles.

My plan is to check the containers often (daily-every other day) and remove any dead mealies of any lifestage from both containers. Also, i will move any larva that have turned into pupae into the pupae container, and move any pupae that have turned into beetles into the beetle container.

For now i have no heat on them, in the winter i will probably give them a small heat pad to keep the temps around 75-80degrees.

The only issue i am still concerned about right now is the eggs. The eggs are laid in the substrate/food and they are very tiny. The substrate needs to be changed periodically (probably about 1x monthly) but care is supposed to be taken not to throw out the eggs or the teeny baby mealworms. Someone suggested to me that i wait until the eggs have hatched and turned into big enough mealies that i can sieve them out, but the adults will just keep on laying eggs so either way im going to lose eggs. I think i might just try changing the substrate in stages...like 1/2 one week and then the other half a few weeks later, this way i will not be throwing away ALL of the eggs at once...

anyway, that is how i have set mine up...if you come up with a better way to handle the whole egg/cleaning thing let me know!!!
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0.1 Bearded dragon
0.1 mexican Black kingsnake
1.1 Leopard Gecko's
0.0.1 Tokay Gecko
1.0 Blue Tongue Skink
0.0.1 Reverse Okeetee Corn
0.1 Anerythristic Corn
0.0.1 Red Tegu
0.1 Bullmastiff
4.1 Cats

thanks.
that was very helpfull

I havn't tried this but mabye you'll find it useful. Have 2 containers for the beetles, instead of changing their substrate every month, move them into the other container until the eggs in the first hatch, then transport them into a mealie only container and change the substrate in the first container then move the beetles back into the first and do the same with the second and keep rotating.

That sounds like a pretty good idea, maybe i will give it a try! Thanks
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0.1 Bearded dragon
0.1 mexican Black kingsnake
1.1 Leopard Gecko's
0.0.1 Tokay Gecko
1.0 Blue Tongue Skink
0.0.1 Reverse Okeetee Corn
0.1 Anerythristic Corn
0.0.1 Red Tegu
0.1 Bullmastiff
4.1 Cats