Mealworms

Mealworms

Mealworms can form a good staple food for many different types of exotic pets and are an extremely easy type of livefood to keep and breed at home.

The mealworm is actually the larval stage of the Tenebrio beetle which is commonly known as the mealworm. Mealworm larvae have between 12 and 15 segments that make up their body length, 3 pairs of legs and a small head. Similar to other types of insects and livefood, mealworms go through a number of different growing phases, shedding their exoskeleton as they increase in size. When they shed, the mealworm will break out of its old shell and will crawl out revealing a fresh soft white skin underneath. Over the next day this shell will harden and slowly darken to the brown/tan colour normally associated with mealworms.

The normal life cycle of mealworms last only 2-3months and during this period they will go through 6 or more moults until they are ready to pupate. The pupae are easy to distinguish in the substrate as they have a distinct white alien look and will be roughly 2cm long. In a further 2-3 weeks the pupae will split open revealing a soft shelled, lightly coloured Tenebrio beetle. Again this shell will slowly harden and darken over the next day or two before turning fully black. The adult beetles will normally begin breeding within 10 days and the females can lay over 500 eggs during their short 2-3 month life. The whole life cycle can repeat from egg to adult in 4 months at which point you should start to see tiny baby mealworms crawling around in the substrate.

Mealworms as mentioned previously are one of the easiest livefoods to keep and breed. They require more floor space than height so a wide, shallow container will work best. If the container sides are steep and smooth then you don’t even need to provide a lid as they will be unable to climb out and escape. However most people prefer to use a lid for peace of mind.

In the bottom of the container you will need to provide a 2-3cm deep layer of substrate. They live and feed off the substrate so a suitable food source needs to be used here. The most common substrate for mealworms is bran and is what they are usually shipped with when you buy online or from your pet store. Other excellent types of substrate are cornmeal, rolled oats, cornflakes or chick starter mash. As you can tell, these are all dry food and as such you will also need to provide moist food occasionally as a water source. This can be anything from banana skins, to slices of apple, celery, sliced carrot or sliced potato etc. You do want to ensure the substrate remains dry so should avoid food sources that will release lots of moisture.

As mealworms live in their substrate it will quickly become dirty and filled with faeces, as such you should sieve out the mealworms from the substrate and replace with fresh every few weeks.

If you discover that your mealworms are breeding too quickly then you can actually place any spare mealworms into the refrigerator. The cold slows down their metabolism and puts them into a form of stasis preventing them from feeding or pupating. If you do refrigerate your spare mealworms remember to bring them out every 2 weeks and allow them to warm for 24 hours, feed them and then re-refrigerate.