Breeding waxworms: wax worms produce too much wax!

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I ordered some wax worms some time ago and they were not able to produce wax and didn't eat much. As the wax worms I ordered turned into cocoons, moths hatched out of their cocoons and laid eggs, then wax worms hatched from their eggs and were able to produce a lot of wax that made containing and organising them a total nightmare!

What I want to know is how to breed wax worms that cannot produce wax or at least minimise the wax they produce. I have tried placing the wax worms in the fridge but they still can make a lot of wax.

 

[Elizabeth Freer]

Never feed waxworms to geckos

I ordered some wax worms some time ago and they were not able to produce wax and didn't eat much. As the wax worms I ordered turned into cocoons, moths hatched out of their cocoons and laid eggs, then wax worms hatched from their eggs and were able to produce a lot of wax that made containing and organising them a total nightmare!

What I want to know is how to breed wax worms that cannot produce wax or at least minimise the wax they produce. I have tried placing the wax worms in the fridge but they still can make a lot of wax.

Please don't even try. Waxworms are very unhealthy for any gecko. If fed waxworms, geckos/leos quickly become addicted to them. Then they refuse other feeders always holding out for their gecko crack.

Time to read those Leo Guidelines. ;-)

An analogy is like humans eating ice cream.

Waxworms are NOT treats for leos. They are very bad news for leos.

 

[flickshow]

They must be addictive like Cocaine! I did read most of your guide! I just have a lot of wax worms that need to go, that's all. I will go easy and feed like 1 wax worm every other day, and sell what i can. I was mostly curious about how people breed wax-less waxworms. It isn’t the reason my gecko stopped eating, because he also doesn’t eat wax worms! I do understand what you mean when you say they are addictive, when i first feed a few my gecko lost interest in mealworms!

 

[Elizabeth Freer]

They must be addictive like Cocaine! I did read most of your guide! I just have a lot of wax worms that need to go, that's all. I will go easy and feed like 1 wax worm every other day, and sell what i can. I was mostly curious about how people breed waxless waxworms.

Would you like me to move this thread to the Feeders subforum?

 

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I found out they have to be frozen. I'll try freezing 5 waxworms for 3 minutes and see if it stops them from making that annoying web!

 

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Freezing did not work; they still create a lot of wax after being removed from the fridge. I'm starting to think the livefood sellers feed the waxworms something that prevents them from spinning web. If anybody knows what that something is, please share...

 

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i was told the waxworms will spin no more web if they are placed in a container with wood shavings!

 

[Koghis]

@ Elizabeth do you have any scientific proof for what you are saying there? I raise my leachianus geckos mostly on CGD and once or twice a week with as many supplemented galleria melonella they can eat. I am not the only one I know plenty of people that feed waxworks for more than 10 years to their animals that show no signs of illness or other of the stuff you are saying. Please verify what you are saying because this sounds very ruff to me. You have to balance the diet of your animals in every case but just saying "DON'T EVER use x or y or z" without proving it sounds pretty vague to me.


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[Elizabeth Freer]

I ordered some wax worms some time ago and they were not able to produce wax and didn't eat much. As the wax worms I ordered turned into cocoons, moths hatched out of their cocoons and laid eggs, then wax worms hatched from their eggs and were able to produce a lot of wax that made containing and organising them a total nightmare!

What I want to know is how to breed wax worms that cannot produce wax or at least minimise the wax they produce. I have tried placing the wax worms in the fridge but they still can make a lot of wax.

Please don't even try. Waxworms are very unhealthy for any gecko. If fed waxworms, geckos/leos quickly become addicted to them. Then they refuse other feeders always holding out for their gecko crack.

Time to read those Leo Guidelines. ;-)

An analogy is like humans eating ice cream.

Waxworms are NOT treats for leos. They are very bad news for leos.

@ Elizabeth do you have any scientific proof for what you are saying there? I raise my leachianus geckos mostly on CGD and once or twice a week with as many supplemented galleria melonella they can eat. I am not the only one I know plenty of people that feed waxworks for more than 10 years to their animals that show no signs of illness or other of the stuff you are saying. Please verify what you are saying because this sounds very ruff to me. You have to balance the diet of your animals in every case but just saying "DON'T EVER use x or y or z" without proving it sounds pretty vague to me.


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You are definitely correct. Balancing your animals' diets is key.

My issue is: How much dietary fat is healthy for a gecko? When does "too much" fat and/or protein lead to hepatic lipidosis? What I understand is that many geckos should get no more than 20% protein and less than 5% fat in their diets. There are more nutritious ways to vary geckos' diets without using either waxworms or superworms.

Sometimes GU deals with sick leopard geckos who are off food, underweight, etc. Some people go immediately to waxworms as a way to get their gecko to gain weight and sometimes report concentrating upon waxworms to the exclusion of anything else. Then the gecko will only eat waxworms...so what has been gained?

Waxworms are very high in fat. Other people on GU advise against using waxworms as well. Part of the reason is that they are highly addictive. Note even a current thread where now the leo is "addicted" to waxworms.

All I have are several nutrient charts supplied by various feeder companies, four or so by last count. Some may have been "borrowed" from one another. Check the Leo Guidelines for those links. They have been criticized by some people other than you, but no one has ever shared better analyses.

(I did phone Grubco who claims to have done independent testing. They gave me the name of their lab.)

Have you some feeder nutrient charts to share with analyses done by companies with no interest in marketing such feeders? Believe me when I say I like to pass along the most accurate info "out there".

 

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I can see the fat difference in my geckoes tail not long after feeding him waxworms. What Eli is saying is correct.

 

[MauricesExoticPets]

Wax worms will continue to make their webs until they pupate.

The fine wood chips you get your wax worms in contains no nutritional value and may be why they do not web up the retail containers, I am not sure.

I like to feed off the moths to any of my arboreal geckos, I believe the activity they get from hunting down the moths is good for them.

It is possible to gutload wax worms, so I don't exactly say no to them as a feeder, I just don't use them very often. They are costly to produce and are a bit more involved in harvesting than any number of other feeders out there, so for me they are a "hey lets get a cup of wax worms" I let them pupate, morph into moths over a bunch of food, as soon as I see eggs I feed off the moths. A while later I complain about trying to harvest a zillion wax worms out of a webbed mass of wax worm waste and just don't keep up with them for another year or so.

By the way I'm fairly sure wax worms do not produce any wax of their own, just web.

Maurice Pudlo