Preparing your materials

Jordan

Jordan

Pupa
I'm really interested to hear how everyone goes about preparing materials, what materials they use, and where they collect them. I know trying to identify rotten oak has been tough for me and the other issue I have a had time with is being able to treat so much substrate to kill off pests. I know many members have pretty large collections so how do you manage to prepare large amounts of substrate?

I've also looked around a bit and didn't find any threads for people to show off pictures of their enclosures. I'm really interested to see what different housing people use, how large there collection is and get some fresh ideas. Post those images here.

 
Hi Jordan

substrate for Lucanidae or Dynastidae?

I generally collect rotten oak or beech wood but it is not enough.

For Lucanidae I use fermented fresh oak or beech sawdust. You can use it for Dynastidae- 70% wood and 30% rotten leaves.

"A substrate for rearing Lucanid beetles

If you live in a place where you can get enough natural food for the species that you want to breed/rear, please skip this chapter. The natural food would be the best choice.

If not, on this page, I will tell you a recipe of a substrate for rearing Lucanid beetle larvae, which was originated by H. Kojima, a Japan’s leading expert on the breeding/rearing of Lucanid/Dynastine beetles.

To begin with, what you need are:

1) Sawdust or Decaying wood mulch (preferably Fagus sp. or Quercus sp.; no coniferous trees);

2) Wheat flour;

3) Natural water (avoid tap water, if possible); and

4) Active dry yeast (2 teaspoons / 5 liters of mulch)

* Capacity ratio of each, 1), 2) and 3), respectively: 10 to 1 to 1 (unit: liter)

The capacity ratio varies among the users of this substrate

Procedures:

STEP 1: Make mulch completely dry under direct sun or by any other means.

STEP 2: Mix the mulch with wheat flour. Then, pour water into them and stir them well.

STEP 3: Put some yeast and stir well.

STEP 4: Keep it at 25 or more degrees C. This makes the substrate well fermented.

STEP 5: Stir it at least once a day until its temperature returns normal. It may take one month.

* Wheat flour is nutrition and also acts as an agent to prompt fermentation which is

beneficial to larvae. And when fermentation begins, the substrate temperature rises.

To make wood into mulch, some hobbyists use a home juicer/mixer. Please be aware that you must make the right choice of wood. This is important. If you are unsure of it, you can ask someone who knows it."

Here are some pictures of my collection:

http://www.terrarium.com.pl/spis/notatnik.php?u=17933

tom

 
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I have avalibility to natural rotten wood. A always hear it must be heat treated or frozen to kill off any harmful pests. It just seems hard to do that on a semi large scale. Do you treat your collected wood first?

Your collection is massive! Do you have any tips on observing larvae? It seems a lot of breeders know what stage their larvae is at and I wonder how they can tell other than a time line considering they aren't seen much unless you dig for them right? I've also noticed many pictures of visiable pupa. Do they always construct cells at the surface or are they unseen sometimes? I'm just wondering how progress can be monitored.

Thanks,

Jordan

 
Excellent post, Jordan and Tomlit. I have pinned this post. If anybody else would like to contribute some information to this topic it should prove very useful to new members. One small issue is that we have a separate forum for "food and feeding", and this thread sort of covers two categories. Still, it is better at this point to say too much than too little. Thanks!

 
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Sorry to be posting so much recently but with the deeper I dive into the hobby the more question I find.

I currently have a few containers but they weren't as cheap as I would have liked. Does any advice for really cheap containers for housing larvae? Plastic seems like the best choice since it's cheaper and lighter than glass for shipping. Would something like this be too soft of plastic that larvae could escape from? It seems like a good choice since you get 24 for a cheap price but if the plastic is too soft that's useless.

http://www.webstaura.../999L5032Y.html

How often do you guys change the substrate or how do you know when it needs to be changed?

Thanks for any help,

Jordan

 
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I find that Deli Cups are great. Depending on where you are in the Nation you may have something like a Smart & Final store, they sell the Delicups in bulk, at pretty good prices. One container that works well for me is the "shoe box" style, "Sterilite" container. They exist in smaller sizes and have straight sides (as opposed to round like Delicups), this makes it a bit easier to maximize space on a shelf.

 
I like this thread. I'd say try and get wood from the place you collected that species. This way, it's the perfect fit. After you find the rest of that tree, or which tree it came off of, you have identified it. After this you know which type to collect. If it has bark on it, great! White Oak seems to be great for most stag beetles BTW.

 
For some reason it won't let me upload any more.
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Johnboy said:
For some reason it won't let me upload any more.
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Click to expand...
Try putting you pictures up on Photobucket and copying the IMG codes to here instead. I find that easier plus you can use 1 upload to post pics in multiple sites if needed. There is a "how to" in this thread.

Northern England? Goliathus larvae? That you SP?
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When i had a small amount of beetles i used a food processor to chop the wood and dry leaves .. for larger logs i would place a log in a pillow sac and beat it till it was dust with a 2lb sledge hammer. "feeling the days stress melt away" lol

However beetles..... breed like rabbits... I now use a top feeding wood chipper with a canvas hopper bag. I run the wood thru it twice one in the leaf chopping side and one in the wood chopping side.

This is also a good quick way to pulverize leaves for Ox beetles or crush hard juniper wood for jeweled scarabs.

you can get them fairly cheap off craigslist.

I store all my "sub" in several plastic trash can with locking lids. I kept all the component separate until I mix it for the species I am going to set up. I have one trash can of each of the fallowing

Oak leaf crush powder "ox favorite"

Mix leaf Crush

Mix Wood Crush "oak , sycamore , ash , grape vines"

oak wood crush

organic potting soil "you can buy at home depot"

Organic compost "you can buy at home depot"

I heat treat all my substrate after I mix it and before I use it for beetles ... I have a huge hot plate to bring out side with a steal pot fill the pot up with sub add about 3 cups of water.

then I boil the substrate for an hour at the least add more water if you are not getting a good steam . After it has cooled, I pour it on to an old towel and wring out the water.

then its ready for what ever tank it is needed for.

In the fall I do my wood/ leaf collecting in my area people are always tossing logs or ripping out dead trees .. these are prefect for sub. I also pic up any hard logs and I have a pile in the back yard for them to rot.

I also have had great luck with hard wood mulches.

You can also ask a dirt/sand yard if they have any old hard wood mulch they wouldn't mind giving up . At the end of the year they normally stock pile it and it rots ,losing its color and selling value. Most of them are more than happy to part with a truck load of "grub gold" that is worthless to sell, but for bug keeping folks it is a great source of quick sub materials. Most of the time it will all ready have some awesome grubs living in it so sort it before you run it thru a chipper. It sounds crazy but if you tell them it is for raising beetles they are normally happy to help out.

let me know if i can help in any way happy beetleing

 
I go out to remote area that I have found through google earth. I mark these spots so I can come back to them later. I look mainy for white oak wood that crumbles in my hand but is not too moist or dripping wet. This can be a tree that has fallen but is slightly off the ground.

I begin to fill up my buckets but at the same time I crumble the wood with my hands so that I can remove the very hard pieces.

Once I get home I fill a bucket with water and substrate. Make sure it's all mixed up then squeeze the substrate to remove most of the water. I am left with moist substrate. (This step is so that the substrate can cook moist. When the substrate cooks moist it gets much hotter than if I were to have cooked it dry, thus killing off more parasites)

I then place the substrate in one of those disposable aluminum food trays. I cook the substrate at 300F for one hour.

I then either run in through a food processor or just put it in a five gallon bucket with a lid and just run it through the processor when I need it.

I've done this for all of my collected substrate and I have had great success with all of my larvae.

 
Hello Jordan

Right now I have a hard decayed oak log that is in prime condition to be used for stag beetle breeding in terms of substrate I am prepping a combination of mushroom compost, dried dead leaves and a couple bags of stag beetle substrate that I have been storing from Taiwan.

 
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