Any info on raising mealworms, waxworms, crickets, minnows, would be appreciated
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Any info on raising mealworms, waxworms, crickets, minnows, would be appreciated
this is what i am going to use for my rasing of crickets. is my sisters old fish tank. and the only thing i need to get for them is a food tray and some type of watering device. and build a cover screen for the tank, as for were i am getting my crickets from it will be this place Armstrong Crickets - decent prices on thier crickets and worms. and the have all the stuff for both.
Raising Your Own Mealworms
1. Find a clear plastic container with approximately six-inch high sides. It may be the size of one to three square feet. For ventilation, drill about forty 1/4 inch holes in the lid. If condensation occurs, drill even more holes, or cover the container with a screen.
2. Put about three inches of one part chick starter (or laying mash) and one part wheat bran (optional) in the container. Mix well and level it. This is food for your newly hatched mealworms.
3. Cut an apple in half. Turn the round side down and push it down into the feed until flush with the feed and bran mixture. This is to give them moisture. If the skin of the apple is removed, the moisture in it will get into your feed and will spoil it. For this reason, do not peel your apples. Check your cultures every week to make sure they aren't out of apples.
4. Add thirty to forty mealworms per square foot of container. Get them from your friends, or you can find them in a farmer's feed building, usually under his feed bags. They can also be bought. Add four layers of unprinted paper such as the regular brown grocery bags. Put paper on top of the feed mixture, apple halves, and mealworms. Mealworms love to hide between the layers of paper. I record the date I start each culture on the top layer of paper.
5. Store such a started culture at room temperature, or warmer. These mealworms will each turn into a pupa, then the pupa will turn into a beetle. These beetles will mate, then lay their eggs between the paper and feed. After this, the beetles die. This is their complete life cycle. Soon, you'll see many tiny mealworms when you run your fingers through the top of the feed. They will produce up to 3,000 worms per square foot of container. This complete cycle will take only two to three months, if your culture is stored at, or slightly above, room temperature. Temperature plays a big role in the length of the beetle's life cycle. I start a new culture every month. This strategy keeps me in plenty of worms.
6. Replace the apples whenever they are completely eaten or half spoiled. After the young mealworms are seen, keep two halves, rather than only one half apple, per square foot of container. Keeping plenty of moisture (apples) available keeps the worms growing faster. Potatoes also work, but apples work better because they supply more moisture for the worms.
7. Put fully grown worms into another well-vented container with only some feed and a bit of apple. Store these in a cool place, or even in the refrigerator. This delays them from turning into pupae for up to six months. Set container out to room temperature for one day every week to allow the worms to feed.
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Raising and Feeding Mealworms
Very good but I don't use paper just mash and like you said about 2-3 months to get started then hold on for the inflax of meal worms way more than one person can use . I give away a lot to the neighbor kids and of course my grandkids...
I threw some mealworms in a 5 gallon bucket 15 years ago added some bran every once in a while give them something with some moisture like potatoe peels.
I almost always have more mealworms than I can use. It doesn't take rocket science to grow some,maybe you can get more if you go by the book, but for my personal use this works fine.
Meal worms also grow outside feed mills on the ground in wasted grain.
agree they are the easy blue gill bait to raise just keep out of the sun light. It' a no brainer and that's for me
Euro larvae – colored maggots – are probably the easiest bait to keep alive for many months. The most important factor to keeping the maggots alive is temperature.
If you can keep you refrigerator at thirty-two to thirty-three degrees the maggots will stay dormant and keep for a long, long time. It is best to keep them in ventilated containers with dry sawdust. Every once in a while you may have to change the sawdust and remove the dead ones to keep the bait fresh and dry. When maggots get warm they get real active and if kept warm for a day or two will start the process of transforming into large black flies. Use a potato slice to provide moisture.
As with any live bait, the key is to keep your bait fresh and lively. A good foam container is best. http://i225.photobucket.com/albums/d...y41/Funky4.jpg Maggots are the number one bait for big bull bluegills. One of the keys to the effectiveness of these baits is scent, but most people don't realize this. Maggots have a tiny scent sack at the blunt end, near their eyes. If you lightly hook them through that bulge, the sack will burst and release this scent. It really triggers Panfish, especially during the mid-day hours when they're usually not actively feeding. When fish don't want minnows, maggots can be the just the ticket. Tiny jigs tipped with maggots or waxworms is the most common rigging method.
Earthworms are fragile. They have to stay cool all the time. If the temperature creeps up to about 60 degrees F and beyond, they'll die in a hurry.
It is easiest to build a worm box using either an old sweater box with a lid, or simply buy a dark-colored plastic storage container with a cover (usually $8 on average). Surface area is more important than depth -- and too deep a box can lead to complications. Look for a container approximately 2' x 3' x 1' deep. Drill or punch about 10-20 small holes (1/4" or less) around the side of the bin for aeration, about 1" - 2" up from the bottom.
Worm Caddy
(7" x 14" x 8")
http://i225.photobucket.com/albums/d...41/Redworm.jpg
Bedding is easily made by ripping up about five pounds of old newspaper (just the black and white sections) into one-inch wide strips. An easy method is to take several sheets of paper at one time, fold in half, and use scissors to start 1" long cuts about 1/2 to 1" apart. Then tear down the length using your initial cuts. Place the shredded newsprint in a bucket, and add about one to two gallons of water to soak thoroughly. Drain excess water and place in the worm box so that it's still fluffy. Worms need moist bedding to breathe through their "skin" and they also eat the cellulose fiber.
Feeding worms is the fun part of vermicomposting. Feel free to include almost all fruits and vegetables, such as citrus and melon rinds, wilted lettuce, potato and carrot peelings, etc. You can also add coffee grounds and filters, tea leaves and bags, crushed egg shells, and houseplant prunings. Add food by lifting up the bedding, depositing the scraps, and always covering it with the damp bedding. This will prevent any odors or fruit flies.
any one know about minnows...im interested as well!!
Anybody know about the giant mealworms or superworms, I heard they were sterile and would not reproduce, is this true?
Red Wigglers/red worms are simple to raise. I use an old 15' chest freezer 1/2 full of a combination of cow manure,preferably mostly dry chips obtained from the pasture, and a bale of peat moss from the lawn & garden store. Blend to gether and moisten with non chlorinated water from a pond or well. Order a 1000 red wigglers off the internet or get some from a friend. Like SHIPAHOY41 said feed them fruit & vegetable matter etc. They REALLY like cantalope and watermelon scraps. The scraps are sweet and the worms love them. The worms breed around 65-75 degs so this is easy to maintain. During the summer keep the lid propped up to allow ventilation and ALWAYS keep the container in the shade. My freezer is outdoors under a shed. In the winter time when it is really cold I put a 25 - 75 watt light bulb in there for warmth. The wattage changes as the temp increases or decreases. Keep the lid cracked about 2" to allow for ventilation even during the winter. I use a stick the size of my thumb(high dollar measuring device). In Oklahoma the coldest winter the temp generally is not below 15 degs. If its 15 degs I have the 75 watt bulb in the freezer and the lid is cracked. They breed some throughout the winter. The red wigglers are known for being excellant composters and excellant bluegill bait. Other bluegill baits are excellant too but the rest do not compost the kitchen waste. Within 1 year of raising these wigglers they will be coming out your ears. You can also take some of the bedding and plant your wifes plants and flowers in it. This will make the wife happy, the plants will do well and it allows you to keep the bedding fresh. BTW trout love them too:D Hope this is informative for some.
Raising minnows is easy too. If you own a farm or have a family friend that does then you are in luck. My family has a 1/4 acre cattle watering pond that stays around 3-4' during the summer. I poisoned it with rotenone to kill all the fish first. There were only perch in the pond and they were only 3-4" long . No real loss although they make great catfish and crappie bait. I fertilized the pond with several bags of fresh grass clippings. This happened to be done in August so it decayed quickly. In October I bought a gallon of rosy reds,about 1200 minnows, for around $65.00 and stocked the pond. Rosy reds are a color phase of the fathead minnow. They breed upside down on a surface. Yes, you read that right...upside down. I places several pallets in the pond stacked on top of each other and held in place with a T post pounded in the bottom. A spawning tower in a sense. I installed 2 towers. I also had some scrap 3" & 4" PVC pipe. I cut 15-20 pieces and each was about 8"-9" long. I threw that in for additional spawning structures. This idea came from the internet. I may add some additional ones this spring. The minnows start to spawn around 65 degs, so say April in Oklahoma. The rosies will spawn in April,May,June, July, August and possibly September. If you can stand to leave the pond alone for 1 year you will NEVER run out of minnows nor will your buddies. A fisheries biologist friend of mine told me that after 1 year the 1 gallon of rosies that was stocked will have developed into at least 5 gallons or 6,000 minnows. By end of year 2 maybe 30,000 adult rosies. I trap the minnows with a black vinyl coated minnow trap and a small handfull of dog or cat food. The vinyl coated trap does not bruise the minnows as bad as uncoated traps may. I toss the trap in the pond and after as little as 2 hours I have harvested 6 - 10 dozen adult minnows.
I hold the trapped minnows in a 300 gallon rubbermaid watering tank with aeration for as long as I need to,several weeks until they are all used up. I feed them goldfish food from Walmart and they readily come up and feed on it.
Finally I treat the tank with a 16 ounce cup of rock salt and some tetracycline (an antibiotic) approx 1/2 bag, available from feed store for $5.00 to kill all fungus and heal them up. This is not necessary if you use the bait within a week or so. I am just particular about having the best live bait I can have. Maybe that is why all my crappie buddies want my rosies.
Fatheads are tough tough minnows much tougher than shiners and can take a wide range of dissolved oxygen and still survive. My experience with rosies is that in clear water and stained/murky water the fish hit them 3:1 faster than regular minnows. That orange color sticks out like a hot burning ember on a black night. Ok,I am tired now. I hope I have helped someone. tight lines.:D
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Originally Posted by cricket george
This is exactly how my dad raised minnows. His uncle had a farm, and three or four of the ponds were stocked with minnows (shiners, in this case.) He had a seemingly limitless supply.
Here is something I learned sort of by accident. In warmer months in the south, pick up a bag of "grounds for your garden" used coffee grounds at most starbucks for free. Find a shady spot in your yard. Add enough water that they are good and moist. That's it. You will have hundreds to thousands of soldier fly larvae growing in the mix in a few weeks. These are much bigger than "normal" maggots, i.e. up to an inch longer or more. Bluegill love them.
For the hardiest worms that can handle 33F to 90F+, just collect the fat, native earthworms that get driven out of the ground during spring rains. I talking about the south where the bigger night crawlers do not do so well. These worms are not as sensitive as red wigglers. You have to have a "cool" period during the summer where you don't feed them.
My red wiggler bed has loads of soldier fly larvae and they are VERY agressive when it comes to feeding on the compost. The sunfish will feed on the larvae,but I have found they are a little hesitant to eat the larvae. The wigglers are a different story. I frankly would prefer not to have the soldier fly larvae in my bed as they consume large quantities of fruit and vegetable matter that the wigglers would normally eat.
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Originally Posted by Tony from Oak Point
Thanks for the tip, Tony. The last time you posted about soldier flies, I spent an hour or so researching them on the web. I have not had the chance to grow my own yet. I did actually used soldier fly larva once before. A friend of mine had some and let me try them. I did not catch much that day, but the area I was fishing wasn't exactly loaded with bluegill. I'd really like to try them out in some of my favorite gill ponds.
As far as soldier fly larva, seems to work best in warmer months, where worms are better in colder climate. at least from my experience. Also, the larva seem to work much better when they are less mature, by the time they pupate or turn dark / thicker shell they are not as good of a bait. Therefore the soldier fly larva you get from the pet store (collected when the larva clime out of the bins to pupate) is not nearly as good.
For a year or so my daughter considered the earthworms her pets and I used the larva almost exclusively instead. I think it is very similar to horsefly larva which naturally grows in the lakes.
I try to keep the larva out of the earthworm bin, not only will they eat ALL of the food but when things heat up in the summer they can turn the bedding to slime and kill the worms very quickly.