Moths and Maggots in mealworm colony, driving me crazy

[Saskia]

I have had geckos for 10 years now, and all this time I have had mealworms, (just to be clear: I do provide variety to my geckos' diet with crickets, grasshoppers, 3 different types of roaches, superworms and an ocasional waxworm) but I have always bred mealworms to have a "just in case" feeder always available...

Anyways, for the past couple of months I separated my mealworm colony into 2 colonies, in order to give them more space and have them reproduce more and so they have, I now have twice as many, but one of the sub colonies has gotten infested with this annoying moths and their maggots, they look kinda like this:





In the last couple of days I was kicking myself because I had put flour into the bedding mix, and I thought that was attracting the moths, and I spend 3 whole days separating mealworms, pupae and bettles one by one into a new container using just bran and oats as a bedding, and I tossed the old bedding and yesterday I found 2 new moths into the new container!!! The moths are annoying but the maggots are worst because they crawl out and you can find them everywhere!! My family is NOT happy about that! Not only I am breeding roaches into the house but now there are worms crawling everywhere (Everybodu thinks I am grose )!!

This had never happened before and now only one of the containers are infested! as anyone had this problem?? How do I get rid of the things??

Thanks!

 

[mecoat]

I've not had this problem (mind you, I've only just started my mealworm breeding this year). Do you keep your colonies covered? I've got lids on all of mine. Is it possible you've been reinfested since the sort?

 

[Saskia]

Óne of the colonies is covered (the infested one), it has a lid with a plastic mesh on top, but the woles in the plastic mest are quite large, the other colony is in a fish tank with no lid and it has no problems

 

[Hilde]

Look up pictures for Indian Meal Moth (Plodia interpunctella), they look like the one in your picture.

 

[Saskia]

That looks like it!! Thanks!1 Do you have any ideas on how to get rid of them?? What causes them?

 

[Hilde]

This link should help. Control info is partway down the page.
Indian Meal Moth

 

[Gekkotan]

Here I had problem with another moth species in my mealworm colony, when it wasnt stable yet, just like in your case. I took some time until I have the infestation finished, but I placed the colony inside a trash sac, and opened it every day and killed all moths and their larvae I could find.