Hornworm breeding

[Shade03]

Hey friends!

So I have successfully reared colonies of several feeders, mealworms, superworms, waxworms...

I had been trying hornworms for a few months now but kept getting absolutely terrible luck in terms of male/female ratios, at times getting entire batches of ~10 moths that were all either male or all female! Insane.

But now I had finally gotten a decent split between males and females, that eclosed around the same time and lo and behold...! I got baby hornworms!

So, my question(s) is/are... How long does it take approximately for a hornworm to go from hatchling to a big fat caterpillar? I know these things can basically double in size in a day if the temperatures are right.
As well, I hear that on artificial diet they do not get the carotenoids they need and so their vision ends up poor. Does this generally affect the moths as well?
Currently I am feeding the hatchlings carrots, which they are eating. It seems they develop a preference to whatever they are fed when they first hatch. These will all be raised to become moths and start a new generation, so I tried giving some of them some tomato plant leaves after they had already been on a carrot diet, and they went for the carrots instead! Interesting.

So now I am also wondering if carrots will provide them with all the nutrition they need to successfully make it to adulthood? When I was buying hornworms from the pet store, they had them on artificial diet but I generally fed them carrots after bringing them home and they seemed to make it to moth-hood so I am hoping carrots are ok.

If anyone is capable of answering these Qs, it would be helpful!!!

 

[Introvertebrate]

I don't have your answers, but I'd be interested in any you get.

 

[Tarantuland]

It will take 2-3 weeks for them to go from hatchlings to pupating in my experience, in mid 70's with constant access to food. Hatchlings are very small and they get quite big before pupating. If they eat any tomato, they will become toxic to tarantulas and can kill them if they eat them. Not sure about carrots. Repashy hornworm chow is a safer bet.

 

[Shade03]

Since this batch I plan on re-breeding, I have a couple on tomato plants and the rest on carrots, potatoes, and celery.

I still have more hatching every day. A few have died off for various reasons, but I have a good amount of mini hornworms currently (At least 50, likely more), and some that are getting a safer size.

The ones on the real plants are doing VERY well.

We shall see what kind of difference it makes!

 

[Shade03]

The first hornworm I have raised from an egg that my own moths laid.

Many are now at a safe size where they should hopefully at least make it to pupating.

This is great. Whenever I bought hornworms from a store they always looked sickly, and many would end up dying off of a caterpillar disease so I had to split up all my caterpillars. These all look super healthy.

 

[Tarantuland]

Awesome!! I've been unsuccessful so far but I want to try again when I have more time

 

[Shade03]

I have approx. 60 hornworms right now and it takes me about an hour and a half every night to clean all their containers.
I need to figure out a better way to do this lol.

Caring for the moths is the easy part bahaha.

 

[A cave cricket]

What type of enclosure are they in?

 

[Wolfram1]

It will take 2-3 weeks for them to go from hatchlings to pupating in my experience, in mid 70's with constant access to food. Hatchlings are very small and they get quite big before pupating. If they eat any tomato, they will become toxic to tarantulas and can kill them if they eat them. Not sure about carrots. Repashy hornworm chow is a safer bet.

are you sure tarantulas mind? Some seem to persist on a diet made up of mostly millipedes, which can produce cyanide and they are perfectly fine.
Chaetopelma olivaceum for example:

 

[Tarantuland]

are you sure tarantulas mind? Some seem to persist on a diet made up of mostly millipedes, which can produce cyanide and they are perfectly fine.
Chaetopelma olivaceum for example:

No I’m not sure, it’s what I’ve been told many times, but it might just be the echo chamber. This is worth reading more into …

 

[Shade03]

What type of enclosure are they in?

They are split across a few plastic tub type containers right now. It isn’t ideal and I wanted to build a better enclosure for them as I did for my moths, or rather maybe edit the moth enclosure…

BUT then I broke my shoulder so that is on hold. Plastic had to work in the mean time cause nature don’t wait.

And for the tomato thing, I know it has something to do with preventing absorption of calcium I think when the animal eats the hornworm, but I don’t know either if tarantulas require that as much as say… Bearded dragons? So I have been erring on the safe side as well.

 

[Shade03]

Important note I have noticed:

As I had a few questions regarding optimal conditions and diet, etc…

I reared some on tomato plants and some on carrots, celery and potatoes.

What I noticed was those reared on the plants (trying to simulate as natural of an environment as I can!) grew much bigger, much faster in a given time period. (I did have to end this part of the experiment shortly after they had gotten huge as I couldn’t get more tomato plants due to breaking my shoulder in an accident.)

Those on celery did not do well. I think the celery potentially has *too much* moisture and killed off some of the babies.

Carrots and potatoes seem to be tolerated. It seems they do indeed develop a preference to one kind of food based on what they are fed first.

For example: Started on carrots, then given tomato leaves, the leaves were ignored in favour of the carrots.

Started on plants and remained on plants most of their lives, they would not eat carrots afterwards, only potatoes.

If started on carrots then offered potatoes though, they ignored the potatoes in favour of carrots.

Interesting

 

[A cave cricket]

Here's a better enclosure idea that will be easier to clean, I'd recommend those giant butterfly enclosures you can buy on Amazon, since you have 60, and then you can just put the food on the bottom, and every morning it's super easy to clean, all you got to do is take out the food and use one of those handheld brooms.

 

[Shade03]

Here's a better enclosure idea that will be easier to clean, I'd recommend those giant butterfly enclosures you can buy on Amazon, since you have 60, and then you can just put the food on the bottom, and every morning it's super easy to clean, all you got to do is take out the food and use one of those handheld brooms.

I worry about caterpillars in those. The hatchlings are TINY and I would worry about them escaping.

Also I used some mesh stuff that I used to build my moth enclosure in some of my caterpillar containers and if they ran out of food overnight, they started eating away at the mesh and managed to bite holes in it! Not large holes but holes nonetheless.

When I clean them every day, I clean out all the poop, clean off any food that still looks good (again using potatoes and carrots here), remove food that looks like it is going bad, clean out the paper towel I have at the base of the containers, transfer all the caterpillars into a new container with new paper towel and new food.

If the caterpillars are on the food pieces it isn’t too bad, but when they are on the paper towel it is more of a pain to get them off especially when they are small. Have to be super careful not to rip off their legs or squish them.

For the smaller ones I put that mesh so the poop falls through and it is easier to clean.

I was wanting to modify the moth enclosure so that it can accommodate caterpillars in the lower half or something, but may also just build a whole new one for the caterpillars.

 

[A cave cricket]

Don't worry about them escaping, I use them for monarchs, the babies are absolutely miniscule

 

[Shade03]

My first moth of this batch that I hatched has just eclosed! And he looks perfect.

I have just over 30 more pupae from this batch. A couple of the pupae are slightly deformed, I think this was due to not enough humidity while pupating.

After the first few pupated weirdly I kept the rest in pretty moist peat moss and most came out perfect after that.

 

[A cave cricket]

Thanks for the update!