Strange Mealworms ...

[Nikos]

I have my mealworm colony for about 6 months now and the second breed of melaworms are a lot smaller than their "parents"....

Do you guys experience the same with your colonies?
Am I doing something wrong?

 

[Buspirone]

Any chance that the "parents" were large mealworms....the ones treated with growth hormones to make them grow larger and now you have untreated offspring that are of normal size.??

 

[Nikos]

could be but we're talking about BIG difference in size...
the new breed is aprox 1/3 of the parents size!

ANyhow I use the new beetles to feed my scorps.

 

[Beth-Tex]

Am assuming at this point that you are not talking about very young mealworms. The beatles do not lay their eggs all at once. This causes several different sizes of worms to be in a 'farm.' Also, when you started out, did you have the regular mealworms or the king worms? That makes a big difference as Buspirone stated.

 

[Nikos]

I'm talking about the beetles that the new breed of mealworms turned into.
These beetles are 1/3 of their parents...

I started the colony with regular mealworms.

Could it be their diet?
I'm keeping them on a substrate made of differend kinds of wheat (oat, grain...) and suppling them regulary with fruit slices for moisture.

Do you think that if i start giving them meat they'll grow bigger?

 

[Buspirone]

A long shot but maybe the fruit or something else you are feeding them was treated with an insecticide of some sort and the residual effect is stunting their size. Not enough to kill or cause harm but enough to retard development/growth.

You could try adding more protein...fishfood flakes or some kind of gutload product like JurassiDiet.

 

[Beth-Tex]

I'm talking about the beetles that the new breed of mealworms turned into.

NOW I gotcha...........you know something.....I have noticed that as well....................the beetles seemed smaller than the "parent" beetles.........so what I did..........I used only pupae that were larger than their counterparts...........I noticed that they in turn form into bigger beetles than pupae that are smaller......so I now hand select the largest pupae that I use for the future beetles.

Have also wondered about inbreeding.......if that is a factor because I don't maintain a large farm, just one that is sufficient enough to get the number of worms that I need. Every once in a while, I do order mealies on-line in order to have "fresh" stock. That seems to do the trick for me.

For the worms' bedding I use: Wheat bran & Oat bran from a health food store & put in some Mixed Gerber or Heinz baby cereal & put in some powder Vionate multivitamins & for moisture I use carrots. That works for me. I figure that the little crawlers are well fed & in turn provide a nutritious meal for my Sugar Gliders AND my Ts.