breeding live food....

I've been giving my quails wax worms over the last week or so as I normally end up having loads left as my son's toads don't eat many at a time and they end up cocooned before I can get them to eat them.

I have only 3 cocooned so I thought I might as well give it a go and breed them. I had everything!
So we will just have to wait and see if it works.

I found it on this website - not sure if it's someone's on here.
http://www.quailsrus.tk/

ange xx

Waxworms are great fun to culture Ange some people have tried alot of different ways of culturing them but have failed for some mysterious reason :S, my first attempt failed so i tried again exact same setup and it worked, i've started a new culture the other day so hopefully i'll end up with more tiny waxy's good luck with yours Ange let us know if it works out for you.

Keelan

I've tried culturing them for my fish (I keep large clown loaches that love them). I managed to get them to puppate and got loads of moths, but they didn't seem to lay any eggs for me. I'd love to know the secret to culturing them as they are quite expensive to buy.

buying live food for the birds and reptiles costs quite abit, mealworms are £2.25 i think the 50 waxworms in the tubs are £1-£2.25 and the crickets are also £2.25, i would think if you can culture the livefood then thats great and cheaper, you know what they have been eating and can also gut load them before feeding my mealworm culture is doing great atm there's thousands of tiny mealies ranging from 1/2cm - 2cm.

I've not had problems culturing meal worms, they just take a bit of time. I just give them oatmeal or wheatabix. The main issue in culturing mealworms is trying to keep them from getting damp.

For wax worms I think I used weatabix soaked in a 50:50 honey/water, then left to dry before adding the wax worms. You need to keep them in a sealed container with some ventilation as the moths will fly everywhere. Also I think they die if too cold/hot.

I was also considering culturing flightless fruit flies (drosophilla). Does anyone have a culture?

i've been culturing flightless fruit flies for a lil while now, i dont know how much longer they have of breeding before the flightless becomes flying fruit flies, very easy to culture too, i use fruit flies for praying mantid nymphs i use this method its very good : http://homepage.ntlworld.com/alan.cann/articles/Drosophila.html

fantastic, thanks for that Keelan.

I'm going to give that a go. Where do you keep your cultures? Indoors or out. I want to keep mine in a shed outside (protected from rain but not much else), some people are grossed out by bugs. I don't know why?

Your welcome
i have my cultures inside they really dont smell too bad at the highest point abit like homebrew just strong yeast, in that video he adds sugar, the cultures i first tried to make using sugar went mouldy so i made some without and they are doing fine just a tip so i would make a few using sugar and a few without and see how you go with those, or you might find they both work for you lol and not for some.

Keelan

ps: what do you feed/planning to feed them on?

I was planning to feed them to my fish, ducks (ducks go wild on flies) and give some to Nino for some of his more exotic quail.

Bugs on the whole are quite nutritious (high in protein and amino acids). So a very good natural supplement. Bugs feature quite a bit with Australian aboriginals, Thai and Indo-Chinese food. Also animals enjoy chasing around for them, so can only be good stuff.

ohh yes i forgot you had fish ok so what else can we culture haha has anyone tried bean weevils (spelling?) im trying to get ahold of some lobster roaches to cut down on me buying crickets all the time

EDIT: how about springtails,woodlice or silverfish? would fishies eat those

I'll give anything a go as long as it doesn't smell too much and take too much room

I have tonnes of composting worms. Fish and ducks love them. It's "free" food as far as I'm concerned. Made from stuff that would have gone in the bin and land fill. Everything gets recycled here, except my poo

didnt want to know that last bit Andy haha
well i have a few things in mind that i would like to culture (mainly for the fun of it) which are bean weevils, silverfish and springtails will let you know how i get on hehe

i onlt breed cockroachies for the lizards lol

what roaches you got Adam? you selling any?

Andy what do you think would be a good easy bug to breed for my little family of rummy nose tetras and harelquin rasboras?
I never even thought of breeding food for them... its a great idea! i hate feeding them just on flake food and dried bloodworms etc they don't look much fun to me.
I was thinking of getting some ghost shrimp or guppies to feed the fry to the fish but not sure yet as I haven't designed the sump that they would live in yet so they might all get sucked into a pump...

hi Jen,

Slightly off topic about fish (sorry Suz). Perhaps some of these things can be fed to baby quail?

If you want to breed fish, live food helps condition them. Makes them more vigorous and randy. Probably the high protein content. I guess the same is true with many animals (unless they become obese).

They may not eat guppies. I made the mistake of putting some guppies in my tropical pond, thinking my large 6"-9" clown loaches would eat the fry. 6 months later I was supplying hundreds of guppies to my local petshop.

You can breed whiteworms, which they love and is quite good for them. They are basically like minature earth worms, but only grow to about 1cm and are white. They are easy enough to cultivate in a little plastic take away container with sterile compost and a sprinkle of porrige oats (dry). The medium just has to be slightly moist.

Grindal worms are very similar, but even smaller. Exactly same method. You can get little worm feeders from aquarium shops and watch them get sucked up. Fish love em.

Daphnia, artemia and shrimps can be too much trouble and take space. Also nutritionally quite poor. So I only keep a few Daphnia every so often.

I try to alternate the food a bit. To even out their diet a bit. "a little bit of what you fancy"

Flies, mealworms and waxworms are too big for tetras and rasboras. Good for birds and much larger fish. You can get really tinny bugs, but I've only cutured them by accident when they contaminate my cultures.

kenza wrote:Waxworms are great fun to culture Ange some people have tried alot of different ways of culturing them but have failed for some mysterious reason :S, my first attempt failed so i tried again exact same setup and it worked, i've started a new culture the other day so hopefully i'll end up with more tiny waxy's good luck with yours Ange let us know if it works out for you.

Keelan

Will do.
They have fully cocooned now so it's just a wait and see what happens now.

My son can't wait he loves things like that.

How many show I feed each quail a week / day??
I know that are full of fat, so I can't give my fire bellied toads many. So I didn't want to have over weight quails.

ange xx

I use waxworms as treats for quail i normally give them 3-4 a week, mine go nuts for mealworms my Fire Bellied Toads aren't really bothered with waxworms sometimes they will take a couple, but munch down their crickets do you dust any crickets with the dust from T-rex? (it smells like bananas lol)

you can also feed waxworms and mealworms to wild birds. Specially in spring and early summer when they have young chicks. Bit extravagant, I know. But it's quite nice to see what turns up. I use a cage feeder, so only the smaller birds can get at it (otherwise the starlings and pigeons monopolise).

How do you feed your waxworms Keelan? I've read that they feed on honey and infest hives. SO I've been mixing honey/sugar/water and putting it on weatabix. Then letting it dry out. I'm going to buy some nice big glass jars and try culturing them again.

yep thats how Andy i dont mix with sugar and water though (never tried that but shall try it some time ) you can use crumbled bran and or weatabix (ive heard weatabix is great again havnt tried that but will do lol) i often leave a bunch of waxy's or mealies out an my nans but mostly pigeons and starlings are at it like you said lol.

what kind you after kenza

Let me know when your Lobsters start going if thats alrighties Adam

kenza wrote:I use waxworms as treats for quail i normally give them 3-4 a week, mine go nuts for mealworms my Fire Bellied Toads aren't really bothered with waxworms sometimes they will take a couple, but munch down their crickets do you dust any crickets with the dust from T-rex? (it smells like bananas lol)

I have to hand feed my toads (tweezers) as one of them will eat all the crickets and the other 2 get nothing.

I have used T-rex in the past and it does smell nice,using some other make at the moment.

Just been through my mealworm culture and the babies are growing soo fast theres even more than i though, so i took a pic of a few mini/small next to a large:



EDIT: also found this chart on the net for anyone wanting to size their mealies up :

I must measure my mealies tomorrow as I don't think mine get to an inch long before they pupate. Wondering if mine are prematurely pupating. I get some beatles, but not all of them seem to emerge properly.