Ghostbirb
Chameleon Enthusiast
Any suggestions for bug breeding/breeding set up videos?
Hornworm adventure (aka What have I done?!)
- Thread starter MissSkittles
- Start date
BlusMom
Member
I'm ok with crickets, dubias, wax worms, meal worms but that's it. Silk worms are disgusting!
MissSkittles
Chameleon Enthusiast
What are you interested in breeding? There’s tons of videos on YouTube and it seems each has their own way of breeding their bugs. There are some important things that each needs, such as adequate heating and humidity, but honestly I don’t measure either and just kind of ‘eyeball’ it.
MissSkittles
Chameleon Enthusiast
Really?! I love silkworms! They are my favorite buggy. They are slow, don’t bite, are so soft and pupate into the prettiest little moths. The only thing about them that I don’t like is how fragile they are.
Ghostbirb
Chameleon Enthusiast
Crickets and Dubias
BlusMom
Member
I think the webs they make remind me too much of spiders and it gives me chills.
MissSkittles
Chameleon Enthusiast
With crickets, you need to give them a container of damp soil to lay their eggs. The only problem is they tend to eat their eggs, so you’ll have to fit a piece of screening over the soil to protect the eggs. The female crickets have long ovipositors that can reach thru the screening to lay eggs. After a few days you’ll remove their lay bin and place it somewhere a bit warm for the eggs to hatch. With any luck you’ll have a bunch of pinhead crickets. I don’t know timeframes for hatching, though I think it’s probably around a week.
Roaches are much easier. Put the adults in a good sized bin with smooth sides (so they can’t climb) and good ventilation. Add some egg crate, toilet paper tubes, cork bark or whatever you have. Keep them at least 90F and feed them well. In about a month or so you’ll start seeing babies. To grow your colony, leave some of the babies to grow into more adults to make more babies.
Snuits
Chameleon Enthusiast
MissSkittles
Chameleon Enthusiast
NOOOOOOOO! 5 is plenty!Sounds like you need more chameleons
I mean it depends on how you look at it... 5 is an odd number.
However 5 is half of 10....
But then again 6 has a better ring to it.
MissSkittles
Chameleon Enthusiast
Nope, nope, nope! I’ll take 5 as being half of ten...it’s a good number that meets my wee bit of ocd-like tendencies. 
chameleonaire$
Member
ok on the subject of bug rearing, i have been wanting to share my adventures and see if anyone had similar struggles or solutions. HIGHLY recommend silkworm breeding if u can keep up with the mulberry leaves. the moths are extremely cute and very clingy and fun to hold. my cham eats them too. this is our new staple.
- helix aspersa snails are surprisingly difficult to care for..and nasty..and require green tea baths and all kinds of weird stuff. mine are not doing hot and ive put so much work into them
-mantids also very hard but cham loves them
-im too scared of roaches and crickets to breed them. too many bad experiences
-love bottle flies and currently experimenting w using dogfood to cause them to breed (instead of rotting flesh)
- helix aspersa snails are surprisingly difficult to care for..and nasty..and require green tea baths and all kinds of weird stuff. mine are not doing hot and ive put so much work into them
-mantids also very hard but cham loves them
-im too scared of roaches and crickets to breed them. too many bad experiences
-love bottle flies and currently experimenting w using dogfood to cause them to breed (instead of rotting flesh)
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MissSkittles
Chameleon Enthusiast
Love my silkies! 
Carloscruz
Avid Member
Are the difficult to breed
Lindasjackson
Chameleon Enthusiast
Someone on here, can’t remember who, gave me some silk worms last year which was very generous of them and my Eustis loved them but there were too many and he couldn’t eat them fast enough. I kept them fed but eventually they all got sick and turned brown and gross! I think if I weere To buy some I would only order a very few at a time so this wouldn’t happen.
chameleonaire$
Member
not really, they just require A SHOCKING amount of fresh mulberry leaves and kind of high temps (85 when theyre small, then 75 when larger). i live in an attic apartment tho so it actually gets that hot w/o ac in the warm months, so i keep them in my non-air conditioned closet.. and u have to make sure the moths are happy bc they only live a week and they need space to breed. I keep them in my spare 18x18 reptibreeze.
chameleonaire$
Member
luckily my guy loves them so they go fast for me. but they dont really provide him the enrichment of hunting, so im always throwing in some flies and mantids too. but that same thing happened with me with hornworms once...they got about the size of a finger and i left them with their chow they came in, left for 3 days and came back to brown mush it was disgusting.
MissSkittles
Chameleon Enthusiast
Okay…now I have a small container of baby crickets. Yay? 
The hornworms have been growing wonderfully and all my animals are really enjoying these seldom offered treats. Thankfully they are all growing at very different rates. The leopard geckos have stepped up to the plate and are doing their due diligence in helping bring the numbers down. I’ll probably let some of the horns go thru their lifecycle and try breeding them again. Yup…I’m crazy like that.
The hornworms have been growing wonderfully and all my animals are really enjoying these seldom offered treats. Thankfully they are all growing at very different rates. The leopard geckos have stepped up to the plate and are doing their due diligence in helping bring the numbers down. I’ll probably let some of the horns go thru their lifecycle and try breeding them again. Yup…I’m crazy like that.
MissSkittles
Chameleon Enthusiast
They take a bit of time, but are really quite easy. Getting them to pupate is the hardest part and it’s just making sure to separate each worm.
