phoenix/repti worms /soldier fly breeding?

[fluxlizard]

Anyone here with any tips on breeding your own soldier flys? (flies?)

I've been watching some youtube vids and thinking these would be a great addition to my roaches/mealworms/superworms this next summer.

I was thinking of running several buckets so I have enough to feed and enough to refridgerate and/or possibly freeze for winter use later.

Any tips on operating the breeding bin would be great- I'm especially wondering how to get the compost they produce out of the buckets without tossing lots of worms out accidentally...

 

[AMGChams]

Fluxlizard,
I think I have read some where that most of the the phoenix/repti worms that you get are starlized and unable to reproduce. I could be wrong but I too would love some information because my little veiled girl cham loves the acutal flys.

 

[Ryan Jarosek]

Fluxlizard,
I think I have read some where that most of the the phoenix/repti worms that you get are starlized and unable to reproduce. I could be wrong but I too would love some information because my little veiled girl cham loves the acutal flys.

Butter worms are sterilized not the Solder Fly maggots.

 

[AMGChams]

Butter worms are sterilized not the Solder Fly maggots.

Ah cool thanks for the info ... also I just found this on YouTube it might help you Fluxlizard.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnfkW4WgtG8
It shows this guy using a bio pod and vegtable scraps ...

 

[fluxlizard]

Thanks for the link.

There is a guy who makes home-made ones out of 5 gallon buckets and pvc and tubing, etc- think I'm going to give that a try this spring. Looks like you can produce a *lot* of very good food very quickly.

You can buy them online for gardens as well as for reptiles. Same species- phoenix worms just trademarked their name when they introduced them to the reptile trade first, so nobody else can market them as phoenix worms but them. But soldier fly larvae are available elsewhere and are popular with gardeners and backyard chicken owners. Gardeners like them because they produce lots of compost very quickly- turn anything organic into compost. Backyard chicken owners are shoveling the crud from the chicken coops into the worms along with table scraps, cardboard, leaves, clippings etc who then turn it into compost for the garden and then the maggots in turn can be used for a high percentage of their chickens' diet.

Supposedly the final stage of worm wants to get away from the other maggots and crawls up a ramp cleaning itself and somehow disinfecting itself as it goes away from the colony (I think I read that they produce something like an antibiotic during this time?) after pooping out the last of it's gut contents and drops into a catch bucket at the other end of the ramp, and the owner just collects them out of the catch container every few days clean and ready to feed.

By the by- the phoenix worm company supposedly feeds theirs a special diet- not crap and trash (my guess is maybe some type of poultry food or rodent food or fish food?)- that makes them more nutritious for herps than those available elsewhere. Nice thing about them is they will eat about any organic matter... Pretty ravenously too as can be seen on youtube where they consume hamburgers and fish and stuff in a matter of hours...

The downside is they cannot be bred indoors...