Accelerated wood decomposition?

[CustomNature]

Hey folks. I have a question about accelerating the decomposition of wood for beetle larvae substrate. I know I've heard someone mention it before, but didnt pay much attention to it then as I wasnt too interested in beetles. Now I have few different species of larvae and I just happen to need that same advice. My grandfather had a large oak tree fall over recently in his hard, and when he cut the tree up with a chain saw, I had hip save the saw dust. I have 3 five-gallon buckets full now, but I need some way to speed up the decomposition for my winter time supplies. I kind of remember someone saying something about flour and other stuff. Any way this can be done?? :?

 

[Randolph XX()]

yeast and fungi, add leaf litter and peat into it and anything cause fermentation would work, but better use it till it dozn't smell.

 

[reptillian]

iim not sayin to do it but on a compost bin if u pee on it it helps break it down lol

 

[Elytra and Antenna]

There are a few different methods outlined in The Complete Guide to Rearing the Elephant Stag Beetle and For the Love of Rhinoceros and Stag Beetles. You can find the first at http://www.elytraandantenna.com but the second is only available aftermarket.
The two previous responses were supposed to be funny (I guess).
You can use a flour water mixture to soak the sawdust with. A bucket isn't a good container to use for the process.

 

[Wade]

The easiest thing to do would be to mix the sawdust with existing substrate. The fungi and moisture will cause it to decompose fairly quickly. Sawdust will decay much faster than logs because there's so much more surface area exposed to the moisture. You can do the same thing with shredded aspen.

Wade

 

[Randolph XX()]

There are a few different methods outlined in The Complete Guide to Rearing the Elephant Stag Beetle and For the Love of Rhinoceros and Stag Beetles. You can find the first at http://www.elytraandantenna.com but the second is only available aftermarket.
The two previous responses were supposed to be funny (I guess).
You can use a flour water mixture to soak the sawdust with. A bucket isn't a good container to use for the process.

I've asked my girl friend to buy that book (For the Love of Rhinoceros and Stag Beetles)back home in Taiwan, but she couldn't get it for me cuz the publisher don't publish that book anymore

 

[CustomNature]

You can use a flour water mixture to soak the sawdust with. A bucket isn't a good container to use for the process.

Alright, that sounds easy enough... but if a bucket isn't a good container for the process, what is??? :?

 

[Elytra and Antenna]

The easiest thing to do would be to mix the sawdust with existing substrate. The fungi and moisture will cause it to decompose fairly quickly. Sawdust will decay much faster than logs because there's so much more surface area exposed to the moisture. You can do the same thing with shredded aspen.

Wade

Accelerated fermentation is also meant to improve the medium; mixing with substrate is something else.

 

[Wade]

Ah. I had gathered that his main intent was to have some substrate to use over the winter when it was harder to collect it from outside, and not necesarily trying to create a better substrate. My usual practice is to just keep adding material to the substrate mix, and when it the container gets full I start doing partial substrate changes. There's alwasy lots of the old stuff in there which helps "season" the newer stuff. Most of the time, I use natural stuff collected from outside, but in a pinch I'll use aspen bedding. Mostly this is for Dynastine scarabs though. I don't have any stags and from what I gather their substrate requirements are a bit trickier.

Wade