How I Breed Mealworms!

PoppyDear

New member
Hey~

I thought I would share a very easy way that I breed mealworms as buying them can get expensive over time. Before this, I had no success breeding in small containers, it was just an overall messy process. It was made by a friend of mine and I added onto it, more containers, etc. Hopefully this can help some people!

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This is the setup, five stackable bins I bought from Target. There are multiple stacks I bought seperately for around $10 dollars each. You can see holes drilled into the sides of them (To allow the insects to breathe) and a screen that allows eggs to fall into the lower chamber, I will get into that soon! Going top to bottom;

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This is the top part where I put any pupa and I also check this bin daily. Any pupas that turn into beatles go into the bottom bin, dead pupas are of course, properly disposed of.

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The second box is where the magic happens. All of my beatles are kept in here with a substrate of oats. They like to hide under and in the toilet paper tubes, I think they even munch on the cardboard, this one is getting very fragile, I need to switch it out. It is difficult to see, but there is a screen underneath the beatles. It is melted into the plastic but if you did this, you could probably use some sort of glue. In this way, the eggs and feces fall into the next container;

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This box was recently cleaned, a lot more frass an eggs collected here, but the mealworms were getting big enough to feed so I moved them into a lower container and inserted a new container. Eggs will fall here and hatch, eating the oats and any veggies or fruits I add. As a disclaimer, I feed all sorts of fruits and veggies I usually put on bottle caps to prevent molding, today is carrot day!

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These were originally below the beatles for eggs to fall in, but they are getting big so I moved them down. They are also the feeders, some get moved further down and allowed to become pupa, so I get more breeding beatles. The reason there is so much frass is because there are still eggs yet to hatch, after a few weeks I will pick out the mealworms and clean the substrate.

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The final box to hold mealworms meant to become pupa.


Again, I feed a large variety of fruits and veggies, everyone seems healthy, hoped this helped in some way!
 
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Sybilestial

New member
What kinds of fruits and veggies do you feed them? I'm trying to find them low in phosphorus so that the ratio of Ca: Ph is not as bad.
 
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