Silkworm Cup + Mold

JTelcontar

Member
I saw a old topic related to this (from 2007, yikes) but I didn't want to bring that topic "back from the dead".

I purchased a "baby" silkworm cup from Mulberry Farms a couple of weeks ago. Everything was going quite well, Cicero was LOVING the small silkworms, and I thought they were just the coolest things ever. So soft!

Yesterday I noticed something that looked like a bit of mold in the container. A couple of hours later, boom, full blown mold all over the place in the cup. Wuh oh. At that point, I already had dead/dying silkworms and I knew there wasn't much hope. Cicero had eaten just over half of the silkworms in there, so I chalked up the other 50% to a learning experience and threw out the rest of them.


I kept the cup of silkworms on the very top shelf of my wire rack set up. So there was plenty of ventilation up there (or so I thought). My house is at about 40% humidity, so I figured that would be dry enough.

I never noticed any moisture droplets inside of the silkworm cup.

I tried hard to dump out the poop each day, but maybe I didn't do a good enough job??

I stored the cup "lid up", but maybe it would have been better lid down. Then I could have just opened it and dumped the poop that had fallen down. It is on a wire shelf, so air flow would not be a problem.


Are there any tips/tricks for keeping these silkworm cups healthy until all the silkworms are eaten?

I didn't want to have to buy a "silkworm bin" too, but I suppose I could get something small if necessary.

HELP! :)
 
Most the time at the very most from what I've read chow only will keep non refrigerated for about 7-10 days before goes to funk! So in the future I'd plan on just getting some extra chow and a small bin you can keep them in and only provide them enough chow to eat in a couple of days and just give them new chow every other day!
 
Thanks for the replies!

Sounds like I'll try one more cup with "lid down" and see what happens.

If no luck there, I'll get a small plastic bin (probably shoebox sized will work just fine I'd imagine?) and buy some extra chow.


Time to cross my fingers. ;)
 
I know this is an old thread, but I have been experiencing the same issue with a cup that I got last week. So if we cant keep the cup and food that they came in for more than a week, what do all of you do to resolve this? Transfer to a new container and new food every week? I'm open to suggestions since I just started dealing with silk works. Transferring each week seems like it will be a pain.
 
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