Lesser Mealworms

L

Loosey

Second Instar
Hello all-

I have a small starting colony of giant caves, of which one has finally become an adult out of the six I have in the enclosure. I have a very healthy spring tail colony, and I have also introduced lesser meal worms. The lesser meal worms adult beetles however, have exploded and I have a ton of them in the enclosure.

So heres where I need some advice. I am thinking they are just too thick in there, and I was hoping to have someone who uses them as part of their cleaning crew would be able to reassure me that they are not distrubing my roaches or in some way impeeding them.

Am I looking at pulling some springtails and colonizing them, and then replacing the substrate with a "lesser meal worm free" batch of substrate?

Should I just let the whole thing alone as far as I can tell they arent causing issue, but rationally it just seems off to me to have tons of them in the enclosure. When the one adult giant cave is out, he doenst seem to be pestered by the volume of beetles (mostly wandering around the corkbark having bettle romances).

anyone have any thoughts on a cleaner crew that seems to have had a unbalanced swell in population?

I am wanting to put more giant caves in that encloure as 6 (5 of which are still nymphs) is just too few.. so if you have some to spare hit me up... I can at the very least throw some cash and lesser meal worm beeltes at you hahahah.

thanks-

Loosey

 
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I have them in my colony. Put a small deli cup in there and many of the adults will fall in. Remove them. This will be enough to keep a reasonable balance.

 
what constitutes a deli cup ? I dont think I have a waxed cup like you would get from a food service place, I do however have some solo keg cups and other smallish tupperware things would those work to capture them or are you suggesting something specific?

 
Ya, RomanBuck is right about the cup (or container). Sorry that I was pretty general in my description. They will climb in there and can't get out. A few roaches may also make it in there but you can just get them out. The beetles really help with this species because most of your adults will molt out then die. It is just what this species does in captivity. To my knowledge no one has found the "silver bullet" to keep this from happening. The beetles will eat the dead roaches and reproduce like crazy. By eating the dead roaches quickly they will stop mite out breaks and phorid fly outbreaks. This will keep your colony healthy and thriving but it is best to keep their numbers in check. I have had a thriving colony for decades (sell tons) and i just feed them dry kibble dog food and give them a winging platform. I have 3 inches of moist coir as a substrate, keep them at 75 F in a 18 gallon plastic tote. I throw the dog food on the coir substrate. I jammed an extra large Exo Terra foam display back into the center of the enclosure (deep in the coir) and they use that as a winging platform. Let me know if you have more questions. I love this species. I am assuming you have Blaberus giganteus (Giant Cave Roach).

Also Blaberus colosseus "Peru Giant" (Colossal Roach) rule!!! Just saying :)

 
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I am not fan of lesser mealworms. They are almost impossible to eradicate in large colonies. If you think you might not want them, get rid of them early by replacing everything in your enclosure and washing it with rubbing alcohol to kill any eggs. I much prefer dermestid beetles to eat dead roaches as they don't seem to feed on the dry foods like lesser mealworms do.

 
Brandon said:
I am not fan of lesser mealworms. They are almost impossible to eradicate in large colonies. If you think you might not want them, get rid of them early by replacing everything in your enclosure and washing it with rubbing alcohol to kill any eggs. I much prefer dermestid beetles to eat dead roaches as they don't seem to feed on the dry foods like lesser mealworms do.
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Yes, this is true. :(

 
I am just going to weed them out time to time and manage their population, by sending them to RomanBuck hahha.

 
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MrCrackerpants said:
Just a heads up: They will figure out a way to get into your other enclosures and reproduce. :)
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Those dirty bastards!

Yeh I certainly dont plan to introduce them to anything else, I got them on advice specifically for my giant cave starter colony... I can see now that at this stage at least they were wholy unecessary and they quickly were able to basically take over.

 
I would be keeping them in their own enclosure for sure. I had one adult and i am not sure where it went or anything. I liked them though. If there was a way to sex the accurately you could have all males in the enclosure.

 
Lesser mealworms I find in the wild, under rotting wood in undisturbed fields with tall grass, they eat the grass and clover roots and adults fly and eat clover pollen and other things.

 
Are these the same as Rice Beetles? If so, I love them because the larvae are terrific food for small mantids. I bought a starter kit from Josh's Frogs and took afew from that and put them into my two roach colonies.

I doubt scovered them when I had ordered afew hundred crickets from flukers. I caught some and set them up in a seperate container. My little baby mantids loved them!

 
I have been considering some beetles for my lateralis colony but I'm not quite sure there will be any real benefit. The colony does have a faint smell which I think is normal and I never find any dead, eatin they're own, keepin it in the family.

 
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