White worms in cricket container?? Please help!!

cjack99":1qg81u3o said:

Probably fruit fly larva. Icky things. The warmth and moisture bring them out and they will spawn in a heartbeat. I have a Dubia colony, and just yesterday spent 2 hours transferring the Dubias to another enclosure because suddenly the active enclosure had a crop of tiny little fruit flys, seems like over night. Only thing you can do is move all the good feeders over to a dry enclosure and then wash out the old one.

We now have a system that works for us. A large Walmart plastic container, with screened cut outs to provide good airflow on all 4 sides. Inside, dry bottom, Dubias go on 2, 3 tiered secretary in baskets, which you can get from Amazon for about $20 each, exactly the same as you would see in an office. (went through the egg carton mess for almost a year and discovered egg cartons just don't work, bugs eat them, they crumble and get soggy, and become a fly hatchery) For nourishment our Dubias get shredded carrots, only as much as they will eat in a day, with some times some peas, and even banana bits. But nothing on the floor. For water, they have access to 3 or 4 small containers (cut from empty "Cafe Francais" containers) and filled with water crystals so they don't drown. We have 3 of the big containers so there is always one ready for a swap out. By keeping the bottom dry, and using the trays for the Dubias and food / water, we can rapidly swap out the colony from one to the other, then get the ones that are left on the bottom, leaving the fly larvae behind. During winter we can get an easy 6 months before we need to clean the enclosure. Summer time, sometimes it can be as short as 6 weeks. The flies will eventually move in, it just depends on how clean you can keep your colony. Mine is 4 years old now, I've got probably 3 or 4 hundred Dubias, time to give some away in fact. Been through 3 variations of enclosure and what we have now is so far the best yet.

cheers
cjack

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