FrankiePinchinatti
Arachnoknight
- Joined
- Apr 20, 2019
- Messages
- 192
So over a year ago I bought a 50 pack of superworms to feed my scorpions, but they didn't seem to be fans of them. I decided to try breeding them because, hey, I already had them and they weren't going to get eaten, so why not? I threw them in a bin of oatmeal, separated them out to pupate, then put the beetles back in the bin. I had the bin and tackle box on heat tape because I read that heat speeds up their life cycle, and I was keeping them in a cold basement. Plus I was using heat tape for my dubia colony and they are doing great. I ended up only getting about 20% hatch rate of the pupae, the rest shriveled up and died. The beetles didn't seem to be doing a whole lot and all died out in a couple weeks and I threw in the towel and called it a failed experiment.
Fast forward another ~3 months and I happen to look into the oatmeal bin that I hadn't gotten around to cleaning out yet (I know... I know...) and I see a beetle crawling around in there. I dig through the bedding and find a surprising number of superworms in there. This whole time I had literally done nothing to the bin and it was sitting in the cold basement with no heater, no fresh veggies, nothing. There must have been some eggs in there when I thought everything was dead. At that point I started throwing a couple potato or carrot slices in there once in a while and just seeing what happens, this time keeping the bin without heat. It has probably been roughly 6 months of me half-ass keeping these guys and another 3 beetles popped up (one has since died, leaving me with 3 living right now), I have roughly 30 full grown superworms and another ~50 of various smaller sizes. This is all completely without separating or any meaningful attention to the bin, so I figure I should give it another try.
My questions are:
- It appears the heat tape was a bad idea, did I get bad info and I should just keep them at cold-ish (mid 60s °F) basement temperatures?
- When I throw in veggies they always make the oatmeal around them wet and this ends up causing a wet goopy mess that then starts to get green powdery mold on it. I have tried putting the veggies on a plastic lid, but after a couple of days the superworms have dragged so much oatmeal up there that completely negates the lid being there. How do you keep them hydrated while also keeping the bedding dry?
Fast forward another ~3 months and I happen to look into the oatmeal bin that I hadn't gotten around to cleaning out yet (I know... I know...) and I see a beetle crawling around in there. I dig through the bedding and find a surprising number of superworms in there. This whole time I had literally done nothing to the bin and it was sitting in the cold basement with no heater, no fresh veggies, nothing. There must have been some eggs in there when I thought everything was dead. At that point I started throwing a couple potato or carrot slices in there once in a while and just seeing what happens, this time keeping the bin without heat. It has probably been roughly 6 months of me half-ass keeping these guys and another 3 beetles popped up (one has since died, leaving me with 3 living right now), I have roughly 30 full grown superworms and another ~50 of various smaller sizes. This is all completely without separating or any meaningful attention to the bin, so I figure I should give it another try.
My questions are:
- It appears the heat tape was a bad idea, did I get bad info and I should just keep them at cold-ish (mid 60s °F) basement temperatures?
- When I throw in veggies they always make the oatmeal around them wet and this ends up causing a wet goopy mess that then starts to get green powdery mold on it. I have tried putting the veggies on a plastic lid, but after a couple of days the superworms have dragged so much oatmeal up there that completely negates the lid being there. How do you keep them hydrated while also keeping the bedding dry?
Last edited:
