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The main difference between having a successful colony of feeder insects and a colony-wide disaster is how well you know your bugs. Planning your feeders’ enclosure, what you feed them, and how many you need to keep your colony stable is all dependent on their biology. If you want to keep their numbers stable (without crashing or getting overwhelming), you need to know how fast they grow and develop.
In this article, we’ll talk about the life cycles of popular feeder insects, so you can pick an insect that works best for you and plan your colony accordingly.
Why Are Different Feeder Insects So Popular?
There are a lot of bugs you can give your pets. And no, we’re not talking about a worm you found outside. We’re talking about feeder insects that you can farm in a small area (preferably indoors) to provide a long-term staple food source for your reptile pet.
The most popular home-grown feeders out there are crickets (high protein, high fiber), superworms (a common fatty “snack food”), mealworms (high protein/fiber, can be refrigerated), and dubia roaches (high protein, make great roommates).
Of these, we usually say dubia roaches are the easiest to farm/keep inside. They make a great staple food. On top of that, we typically recommend supplementing your pet’s protein with superworms, which are more fatty and also pretty easy to keep.
Insect Life Cycle Basics
There are basically two kinds of insects we’ll look at in this article. The first is insects that metamorphosize, meaning they have a larval stage, a pupal stage, and a nymph stage. If you’re new to bugs, this is basically what butterflies and moths go through. In our case, these are our two beetle species.
The other kind of insect on this list are those that hatch (or are born) and just grow to full size. They will molt several times along the way, then become sexually mature, and then survive for a while longer before dying. Crickets and dubia roaches both work like this.
Cricket Life Cycle and Development
Crickets are the fastest-growing, shortest-lived species on this list. They spend two weeks as eggs and start growing like weeds, reaching full size in less than two months. They reach reproductive maturity in a few more weeks. Then, they survive for another few months, and die.
Crickets are the most popular feeder on the planet (though definitely not the best), and their short life cycle is probably why. If you need to produce a ton of feeder insects really quickly, crickets are the way to go.
This can lead to a lot of the common issues with crickets, like overcrowding, which can spread disease. If you’re going to start a cricket farm, the main thing you need to focus on is keeping the numbers down. You may have to cull them occasionally (better to find something to feed them to, of course), and introduce new members to the colony, so they don’t become inbred.
Superworm and Mealworm Life Cycle and Development
Superworms and mealworms are both cousins in the darkling beetle family (Tenebrionidae). Their life cycles are very similar, with clear life stages (egg, larvae, pupa, nymph). They can both live for over a year in total, which is mostly affected by how well you can take care of them.
Superworms hatch a little faster, after about two weeks, where mealworms can take almost three. Both darkling beetles then spend at least three months as larvae. Superworms can go longer, sometimes up to six months. The ambient temperature will affect their growth rate (optimal temp for fast growth is 75-80°F).
This is the life stage where you’ll want to use them as feeders. Once they’re as long as the space between your pet’s eyes, they’re ripe. One of the main differences between superworms and mealworms is that mealworms can be refrigerated for later, whereas superworms can’t.
So if you want to save mealworms for later, you can move them to a deli cup in the fridge and keep them in hibernation for 6-10 weeks. Superworms need to be kept fresh.
Eventually, your darkling beetles will isolate themselves and burrow in their substrate. This is the start of pupation, when they metamorphosize into beetles. Pupation lasts two to three weeks. After this, they will emerge as white beetles and slowly turn darker. At this stage, they’re reproductively mature. They will live up to another year as beetles.
Dubia Roach Life Cycle and Development
Dubia roaches are simple in all things. They don’t need much to be happy, and they don’t have a complicated life cycle. Dubia roach mothers carry their eggs internally, so they actually give live birth, as opposed to laying eggs.
Once hatched, they will grow for four to six months before reaching their full size. This is also when they become reproductively mature. Females will gestate their young for about two months before giving birth. Dubias can live up to two years happily munching stale bread in the dark.
Because they have to carry their eggs, females are the more important sex in your dubia colony. In order to control their population size, make sure to pick mostly female roaches. They have wider bodies and no wings. Save a couple reproductive females to keep the population going, and introduce new insects every so often to keep them genetically diverse.