Kingsalmonattack
Member
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.
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.