jedijon
Member
Am cleaning up my dubia colony, to transfer them to a new container and dump the built up frass - and found warehouse beetles in the enclosure. Didn't spot them until I started moving stuff around. There's quite a few, I'm unable to separate them.
People put buffalo beetles in their dubia colonies to clean up protein waste (dead dubia mostly I assume), but warehouse beetles are just a stored product pest. They don't need any moisture and can just live in the oatmeal I use to feed my dubia.
Should I be concerned?
If so, my only plan would be to sort out the roaches by habit [they like to climb up onto the egg carton], while providing a bit of food--where the warehouse beetles will mostly be drawn there. I figure that with a few such repetitions--throwing out the dry food, many beetles and a some smaller roach nymphs...repeat daily until I can simply kill the last few adult beetles...? Maybe this is a plan?
Here's how I think I got here--I'd kept my two colonies [each in a 10 gallon aquarium] inside with loose fitting lids but A) the cat was interested and B) the garage appeared to offer free heat over the summer so I wouldn't need to run a heating mat at all. I've had a few times where there were fruit flies in the cultures but that's easily dealt with. Clean out any and all veggie scraps, clean out and replace the sponge used for moisture daily for a week-ish and voila. This is a new foe...
People put buffalo beetles in their dubia colonies to clean up protein waste (dead dubia mostly I assume), but warehouse beetles are just a stored product pest. They don't need any moisture and can just live in the oatmeal I use to feed my dubia.
Should I be concerned?
If so, my only plan would be to sort out the roaches by habit [they like to climb up onto the egg carton], while providing a bit of food--where the warehouse beetles will mostly be drawn there. I figure that with a few such repetitions--throwing out the dry food, many beetles and a some smaller roach nymphs...repeat daily until I can simply kill the last few adult beetles...? Maybe this is a plan?
Here's how I think I got here--I'd kept my two colonies [each in a 10 gallon aquarium] inside with loose fitting lids but A) the cat was interested and B) the garage appeared to offer free heat over the summer so I wouldn't need to run a heating mat at all. I've had a few times where there were fruit flies in the cultures but that's easily dealt with. Clean out any and all veggie scraps, clean out and replace the sponge used for moisture daily for a week-ish and voila. This is a new foe...
