I bought around 500 of them recently. It's been wonderful, my beardie loves them and I've fed them frequently. My issue is that they poop so much, and the oatmeal substrate I keep them in starts to smell LIKE mold but isn't moldy within a day.
Is this probably because I feed them every day? Should I stop doing that so much? And if I remove the poop, which I can firmly see a large accumulation of on the bottom of the Tupperware I have them in, will that likely reduce the smell? I also want to know if that's even safe for my beardie. I don't want to compromise him. The smell isn't so bad that I can smell it throughout the room, but I do have a very delicate sense of smell and cannot tolerate much stink at all ( smelling healthy beardie poop makes me almost vomit, but we do what we can to love our children, right? ) let alone that much of it.
I'm looking to see if I can find a wire mesh strainer and work through all of it just to sift the poop out, but we'll see because I just moved and I still have no idea where half my kitchen is.
I have 2 adult BTs and 2 near adult beardies and 50 superworms will last me a few months, I don't use them as a staple feeder insect ,they are treats only , maybe 2 per lizard once or twice a week.
Your only option is to remove the supers you have from the old putrid bedding (bran) and place them in a clean tub with fresh bran and some fresh carrot chunk and greens. You'll need to this every month or so.
When I place my supers in fresh bran I supply run my fingers through the old bran and lift the supers out as I find them.
The bran itself isn't putrid. It's the poop-- I've purposely separated part of the bran from the poop just to figure that out. The substrate I have in there with it shouldn't be bad within a day.
Can you post a pic of how you set them up ? Is there a lid on ? I order 500-1,000 at a time, dump in a sweater box with bran and/or oatmeal and feed greens every couple days, with carrot chunks constant. No lid on, they can not escape.
Will do when I get home, though I can say they're in a Tupperware about a foot long and 7 inches wide. I keep them in 2 inches of oatmeal and give them plenty of space to wiggle in. The bowl is uncovered, though I keep it either on top of my cricket keeper which is empty and is actually a file box with the top cut out and a mesh cloth glued for breathing. If this isn't sufficient enough I'll take a picture when I get home in 3 hours.
It's just that they poop a lot, the grain is fine. ?
Edit: my room is around 75F constantly, which is where I keep my lizard as well. They're on separate sides of the room so any of the heat lamp doesn't actually affect my live food. It could be possible that it's just my nose being extremely sensitive, but if you're down to sniff your own bowl of superworms and tell me what it really smells like to you, I'm cool with that.