breeding waxworms (NOT FOR STAPLE)

[frog]

i heard they are easy to breed and i thought it would be fun for some experience and overall just a fun project. who can tell me some stuff on it?

 

[fresnowitte]

Hey Frog!

I've never done it or even tried, but have you ever looked at this;
http://www.feedersinc.com/archives/category/feeders/worms/wax-worms/

 

[MAJ]

Here is another site with a few alternative growing media:
http://aqualandpetsplus.com/Live Food, Wax Worms.htm

Googling "breeding waxworms" will give you a ton of basically similar info on the general cultural requirements.

I tried breeding them for fun over the summer. They like warm dark places,so i just left them on a shelf in my garage for a couple of weeks. Don't open the container until any remaining moths have died off. Otherwise, you will have escapees. The moths will die off in a couple of weeks, and by then you should see a number of tiny worms crawling in the media. A couple of weeks later, and you will have hundreds of decent sized waxworms.
The media is kind of sticky due to the honey content. Once the worms get to be a decent size, you will need to separate them from the media. This can be messy. There is a lot of silk from the worms binding the media together, and it takes some effort to separate them. Tweezers make it cleaner work, but takes absolutely forever. Fingers are much faster but it gets very sticky.

Pros: Very easy to set up and minimal effort to get them going.

Cons: You end up with way too many waxworms for something that should be reserved as a treat. A fair bit of work to extricate the worms from their growing media.

It was kind of fun to try and watch them. You will likely find that your home-grown waxworms are much faster movers/crawlers than their commercially purchased equivalents. Their level of movement is very visually stimulating from your beardie-- just not terribly nutritious. I may try them again in the future, but there was a lot of waste. I was only able to use up a fraction of all of the worms that came in a single generation.

 

[frog]

thanks barbara and MAJ. i did in fact google breeding waxworms and got a bunch of helpful info but i thought, why not get some opinions? i have 3 leos as well as a beardie to feed them to. also i plan on putting them in the fridge (i keep my waxworms from the pet store in the fridge so ya) so i will have a good supply in the fridge. thanks for the help!!

Sara