NAUSEATINGLY BAD SMELLING Calci-Worms

I bought two bulk tubs of black soldier fly larvae for Ivy to help her recover after her operation since she loved them before and I'd purposely run out of the last load just in case she didn't make it.
Three weeks on and they smell so bad they're making me almost retch, an I have the strongest stomach in my family.
The thing is, the ones I had before were in soil, so the smell was reduced somewhat. But the tubs I've got now are nothing but the worms, the food they didn't finish eating (grapes, tomatoes, banana, fermented soybeans, small pieces of cooked chicken, etc) and the powders I put on them, so the smell is amplified even when I throw stuff like turmeric on them to reduce the smell and make them taste better. Ivy's now at the stage where she'll eat them but the smell puts her off after a while and I've started feeding the occasional to my dog instead since he'll eat anything and he kept jumping up trying to get them when I fed her otherwise.

Anyway, I'm not sure what to do anymore. The turmeric, cumin and chilli powder are working semi-okay on one of the tubs but the odour is still getting worse and worse and if I leave this any longer my family won't be able to ignore it any more. We already had an incident one Autumn where Ivy's stinky crickets had the whole house infested with fruit flies and i don't want a repeat of that. My hands are also stinking, too no matter how hard I wash them which is really bad for my dry skin.

Should I get a small plastic crate and fill it with compost from a hardware store or something? That's the only alternative I can think of since they'll escape from a cricket keeper.

Are you planning on breeding them as well? Or just have a bulk amount to hold her over?

I've read that if you feed phoenix worms you restart their digestive tract and they defecate in their bins which causes bacterial growth. That is probably where the smell is coming from, adding to that is the rotting food. I would keep them in some sort of substrate to help dampen out the smell. There is actually a BSF forum if you need more info.

http://blacksoldierflyblog.com/forum/

I'm not breeding them and it's not at all possible for me to do so in the future. I did suggest breeding dubias (her absolute favourite) to my family but they're set against it so calcis are the cheapest option of a live food for her. She does prefer to eat the adult flies but since they're a non-native species here I can't open her tank while they're flying around in case they escape.

I only bought a large amount of grubs since Ivy went through them so fast before she got too sick and they're pretty much one of the only bugs she would readily keep eating after dubias since she tends to leave some crickets and locusts alive in her tank. Not so much now, though since she's the pickiest eater at the best of times and stuff that smells too bad is just not going to be eaten no matter how much it wiggles. I can't afford to keep buying her 50 dubias at £8 a pop every week so I got these as a supposed bargain of 500 for £12. But if she doesn't eat them then the money is wasted.

Where are you keeping them? You said you got 500? Mine did fine with very little food for the 2 weeks that I had them. I would definitely try a larger bin with some of the compost soil in it, but I would make sure that you rinse the worms off before feeding them to Ivy. That will help dampen the smell somewhat. There is a guide on here about growing phoenix worms that might help you too.

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