Flour Beetle and Rice Flour Beetle larvae has also been used for feeding Dendrobatids. They are highly susceptible to moisture, so they must be fed on a dry surface, and any excess should be removed from the enclosures after feeding. Use of these items should be restricted to occasional feedings in a varied diet, and should not be considered a staple food source.
Here is a recipe on how to breed mealworms that I had from www.wormman.com
Mealworms on potato by Worm Man
click for large view.
What you will need to raise mealworms:
1. Container. A Rubbermaid or plastic shoe or sweater box will work well.
2. Bedding. Wheat bran, or whole wheat four will work. So will chicken food.
3. Potatoes for moisture.
4. Starter culture of mealworms
Mealworms are the larval form of the darkling beetle. They make excellent feeders for reptiles, birds and small
mammals. Sugar gliders love them. They are easy to raise. We have been doing it for fifteen years. Meal worms are easily grown if you give them the ability to grow. Meal worms need a good quality bedding. By quality we mean clean fresh and a bedding made of wheat bran or whole wheat flour. The bedding will also be the food your mealworms eat. Worm Man's meal worm cultures are grown by the millions in large pans filled with wheat bran, which you can get at any farm and feed store. You can also use corn meal, chicken mash. The worms are kept at a constant 77 degrees, but you can keep them anywhere between 45 and 85 degrees. We have found that 77 degrees works best for us. The mealworms will take about 12 weeks to go from egg to worm, to beetle.
To start your culture pour 1 inch of bedding into the container and add your mealworms. Add a couple thin potato
slices and that is it.
The worms will morph in a couple weeks into a grub looking thing (picture below). The grubs will become beetles.
Place the beetles in a second container with bran and potatoes and let nature do the rest.
The beetles will die after a couple weeks. Keep the container with the bran in a dry area and add small slices of
potato when the slice you have dries out. In a couple weeks you will see tiny mealworms. Each female beetle will lay up to 500 eggs or more.
click to enlarge
Mealworms go through three stages. The beetle is the final stage, or Adult Stage.
The worms grow and become pupae which do not eat but will wiggle like crazy if touched. We remove the pupae to a separate container and wait for them to become beetles. When they morph into beetles we place them into a breeding container with bran, so that they will breed and lay tons of eggs. The beetles are placed into three such containers until the end of there lives and we are left with many more worms. We place the worms at various sizes into cooling units to slow growth until sale. We take the worms from the cooling unit every other day to let them warm and we feed them and then back they go. Mealworms will live a long time in cold storage, but in the heat they change quickly and breed like crazy. Get your meal worms.
Thank you Worm Man for this recipe and pictures!