The begining of my superworm colony

[piranhaking]

The giants won't breed for you. Just so you know, not sure if thats your intentions or not. Dubia roaches are pretty awesome, I just got started with them too. NO smell, they can't climb much, they can climb a little though I've found out. They're live bearers, so you dont have to deal with laying boxes, and they dont eat the babies, so they dont have to be seperated like crickets. Most importantly they make basically NO!!! noise. They do have a very very quiet hiss if they're disturbed, but you have to be paying attention in a quiet room to hear it.

[wolfy-hound]

I'm in florida, so it's illegal to import most roaches. Thanks for the thought though. All the roaches around here are 'free range'.

No, the giants are in the fridge to be fed to the geckos, not in a culture.

[piranhaking]

Sorry, I didn't think about that . Gotta love how a few bad apple who are irresponsible can ruin stuff for the rest of us. Just because some people cant control and contain their animals they think no one can.

[Jay_Bunny]

Congrats on the beetle! I just got my first pupa a few days ago and I'm waiting for a few more to pupate. I'll be keeping an eye on this thread to see how things work out.

[piranhaking]

plan on waiting a while lol. Its kinda a long process. The eyes will darken first, then the legs begin to darken, then the antenna will darken. As that happens the plate on the top of the head begins to show, then you're a day or two away from beetles. I've got three now, another one came out overnight. The first two still aren't black yet.

[piranhaking]

Up to six beetles now. Does anyone know if there's an easy way to sex the beetles? I've tried looking for it before, but haven't had much luck. I know it doesn't really matter, I'm just curious.

[wolfy-hound]

Check the feet. Female beetles wear pink booties... males wear blue booties.

[jfreels]

Check the feet. Female beetles wear pink booties... males wear blue booties.

lol!

You can't tell. You'll have to wait and see if they start mounting each other. You're bound to have a female or two out of the 6. I started my superworm colony with only 12 beetles originally. They gave me a lot of offspring.

[Jay_Bunny]

Woohoo! 6 beetles! I know with darkling beetles, the females tend to be larger. Not sure if that is true with these guys. I'm up to 4 pupa and two more are about to pupate. Update when you get little itty bitty worms.

[jfreels]

Actually, after you get enough beetles, there is no way you could sex them by size. And they are both darkling beetles If I remember correctly, there are like 20k different species of the darkling beetle.