How to raise feeder insects?

[leo]

I recently bought a Male Sambabva he's around 8mths. He tends to eat a lot and I wanted to figure out how to breed crickets. I bought some silk worms online but they were not what I expected and were expensive because of the shipping. If any one has any tips on how to keep the cost of the feeders low it would really help me. I would rather like invest in a permanent source than a temporary one.

 

[Silverdusk]

Dubia roaches are the way to go. They are clean, don't smell and will feed an army of chams once you have them producing. There is a great book out there also ...

http://www.amazon.com/Live-Professional-Breeders-Frank-Bruse/dp/393061264X

 

[carol5208]

have u tried super worms? I get 100 supers for $5.35 here in Florida. They are the easiest to keep in my opinion. i have very few die. I gutload them as I do crickets.

 

[ghettomike]

I would look into breeding dubia roaches, they dont stink or jump like crickets and it doesnt get much easier to breed any insect than dubias. all they require is heat (heating pad), water source (i use oranges) , food (they eat pretty much anything) , egg cartons (to climb on and regulate temp) and a big blue plastic bin to call home. they make a great staple feeder and they are not like typical roaches, they are fairly slow, they dont jump/fly and they cant breed unless they have heat. I started with a colony of about 40 six months ago and now I easily have 1000 babies and growing. Im just starting to raise stick bugs which are supposedly good feeders too.

 

[DocFox]

I'll give you my two cents, but am by no means an expert at crickets, at which I have had mixed success. I have had incredible success with Superworms and they are the easiest. They don't pupate unless you force them too, so the shelf life is excellent. I've had them live a year or longer. Even once they are beetles, which you need to breed, the beetles live a long time. So don't overdo it thinking you need a ton of beetles.

For superworms you'll need:
1) Some kind of container. I use stackable Sterilite 7 qt drawers. They are slick enough the worms can't get out (don’t fill too full), and have enough venting you don't have to drill holes.
2) Wheat bran. For the worms to live in and eat, use only 2-3 inches so they go through it fast enough that you can sift them and get them into fresh bran before they soil it so bad it's stinky even though there's a lot of bran left.
3) A sifter like you get at the grocery store
4) A plastic sectioned container like they sell for either fishing lures or crafts. 12 or so sections are fine. You will want to drill a couple of air holes per section on these. You use this to put in some supers to pupate. Put them in all by themselves one worm per section, no food. In a few days they will curl into a semi-circle, that tells you they are about to change. The amount of time it takes depends on the temperature. The first time I did it, I had them on the floor, and it took forever. When my ‘bug farm’ started growing, and I needed more space, and decided to use one of my bookcases, and covered it up with a shower curtain to make it look better- that’s when I realized the use of height and temperature…
5) A book case… I put one black light on the middle shelf for the crickets. The shower curtain is important for temperature control. That means that shelf with the light and everything above it is warmer, and beneath it is cooler. So put the worms you want to pupate on the top shelf. They’ll turn from worm to pupae to beetle much faster.
6) A way to give them water (your worms and your beetles, not your pupae or worms targeted for pupation). Some people just use carrots and nothing else. My house is very dry, so I use cosmetic sponges in plastic mason jar lids, to make sure they have a real water source. They seem to like this, and if I don’t tend to them a few days and the sponge dries out, they get very restless, so I take that as the extra water source is a good thing.
7) Gut load. Some folks just use carrots. I use a variety, and basically a lot of my food scraps become bug food- but then I eat really healthy- so apple cores, collard and Kale stems, broccoli stems, etc all supplement carrots.

Once your beetles emerge, put them in one of the sterilite drawers in some wheat bran. They like to have some egg cartons to crawl around. They will soon breed and lay eggs. The eggs will hatch…. There you go. The amount of time for eggs to hatch, and to grow to feeder size is again totally dependent on the temperature. So *don’t* do what I did and make like 30 beetles, then keep the eggs and babies on top shelf- I had so many worms they were costing me more to feed than if I bought the superworms myself. Pace yourself. After your beetles have been at work for two or three weeks, take their wheat bran and put it in a new container, give them fresh bran. You know you have babies if you stir the bran with your fingers, and then the bran moves. Remember heat equals speed. Need big worm fast? Put them on top shelf, they’ll grow very fast. Bottom shelf, grow much slower. Also remember that heat equals dry, and cool equals moist, so make sure to compensate and give them enough moisture that they’re happy, and not so much that their bran feels moist, or damp.

Now crickets… Again, I have had mixed success, and my failures since I figured out the housing I can all point to not giving them water in the sponges for too long (missing a couple of days on a hot dry day.) For crickets ventilation is really, really important. Not enough ventilation and they’ll die very quickly. Again I use sterilite shoe boxes. I’m cramped for space, so I use shoe box sized for the babies. I bought a roll of screen, and using a box cutter and glue gun cut large areas out of the top and glue on screen. Be very careful with that as sterilite also breaks, and if you’re not careful you could cut yourself badly. If you have more space you could just use larger containers and not cover them at all. Then I discovered cookie tins- the kind that are about 10-12 inches in diameter. It was a duh moment really- a rectangle of screen rolled becomes a cylindrical cricket house with cookie container as top and bottom. Just use a stapler to staple the ends together, and slip it down into the bottom of the tin. This only works once the crickets are a bit bigger and can’t easily crawl out from between the screen and the lid which will never be a perfect fit. This is what I store my medium and large crickets in. The advantage is tremendous air flow, and size compact. The disadvantage is it’s harder to clean. I cut newspaper for the bottom.

I use the same cosmetic sponges and plastic mason jar lids to supplement water as I do for my worms. The same heat equals fast rule works for crickets. There is a temperate they really need- 78 is about the minimum to thrive I think, but if you make it too hot they will breed faster, hatch faster, grow faster, but also die faster, and need more frequent watering. I had been using a small container (like cream cheese container) with middle of top cut out and screen in for them to lay eggs in (with mixture of peat moss and sand). The challenge is to keep the soil moist enough that the eggs hatch (if it dries out completely, eggs won’t hatch), and not so moist that it molds. Eggs will still hatch if it molds, but you really would rather it not mold. Let them lay eggs in it for a week or so, then switch out the container. Put the container in a sterilite shoe box, and, again, warmer is faster for hatching.

Recently I had a bunch of anxious females and hadn’t put in a new soil container for them. They laid a bunch of eggs in the cosmetic sponge. I had read that they wouldn’t hatch, but I figured I’d try it. I separated the sponge from the lid, which also had a bunch of eggs in it. Put them both in a quart sized baggie, covered them with moist peat and put the bag unclosed in a shoe box. Lo and behold they did hatch. And it was way lower maintenance not having the spray it every day to keep it moist. I’ve only done this once, but am seriously considering switching to this method completely.

For pin heads I use a sponge without the lid, carrots, apples, and TetraMin Tropical Granules. They love that fish food. Once they get bigger I use a combo of cat and dog food kibble as the dry food.

Hope that helps. I’ll watch for questions.

 

[sandrachameleon]

Hi
This blog entry:
https://www.chameleonforums.com/blogs/sandrachameleon/74-feeders.html
lists many of the commonly used feeders and I've linked to info about each, including breeding info in many cases

edit: dog, cat and fish food is NOT a good gutload for bugs being fed to chameleons.

 

[Texas Panther Man]

I would watch out using cat food or dog food as gut load for your feeders. It has way to much protein in it. I would stick to crick crack and fruits and veggies for my gutloading. You can use dog food on occasion to get a colony of dubia to start breeding faster but then i'd switch them off the dog food before I started feeding them off.

 

[leo]

Thanks!

I'm going to go ahead with Dubia Roaches as they seem to be the most easy to get started with. I appreciate all the responses and tips