PowerHobo
Chalcosoma
So this is a little new to me, and I'm wondering if anyone has had a similar experience.
I don't use found materials in my sub. It is 100% traeger oak pellets, oat bran, yeast, and a handful of larval frass. Last year I made and went through somewhere around 40-50 gallons of sub (most of which was fermented outdoors) and never saw a single worm. I had some green bottle flies pupate in it for some reason, but no worms.
I finished the last of that sub around 3 months ago, and have been using newer sub made the same way, but fermented entirely indoors. Every single larvae container I have now has earthworms in it. Some of them have enough that when I dump a container the entire bottom-most compressed layer is just a loose net of reddish-brown. I'm also finding eggs all over the place which I assume are the worms'. They look a lot like G thula eggs. I've never seen worm eggs before, so that was interesting, at least.
Unfortunately, it does look like I lost a D tityus to these little jerks, as I found a partially caved-in pupal cell with a black grub inside.
What I found very interesting is that when I dug through my sub bins I didn't find a single worm, so it's only my larval containers.
I'm going to be freezing this sub in batches and rotating it out, but I'm still definitely wondering how they got into my larval containers in the first place. Most of these larvae are over a year old, so I don't think it's anything they carried in with them, I can't imagine worm eggs surviving the pressing process that makes oak pellets, and I wash my hands and tools (for scooping) between containers to avoid transferring mites, etc., so how did they get into every single container?
Things That Make You Say, "Huh," for $600.
Edit: Correction: I do have two flower beetle larvae containers that use found oak leaf litter substrate, but I don't use any of my fermented sub with that, so there shouldn't be any cross contamination going on there, plus it has been frozen twice. Additionally, that sub and my other sub doesn't ever get handled on the same days as my other containers just due to receiving the larvae between my monthly beetle checks.
I don't use found materials in my sub. It is 100% traeger oak pellets, oat bran, yeast, and a handful of larval frass. Last year I made and went through somewhere around 40-50 gallons of sub (most of which was fermented outdoors) and never saw a single worm. I had some green bottle flies pupate in it for some reason, but no worms.
I finished the last of that sub around 3 months ago, and have been using newer sub made the same way, but fermented entirely indoors. Every single larvae container I have now has earthworms in it. Some of them have enough that when I dump a container the entire bottom-most compressed layer is just a loose net of reddish-brown. I'm also finding eggs all over the place which I assume are the worms'. They look a lot like G thula eggs. I've never seen worm eggs before, so that was interesting, at least.
Unfortunately, it does look like I lost a D tityus to these little jerks, as I found a partially caved-in pupal cell with a black grub inside.
What I found very interesting is that when I dug through my sub bins I didn't find a single worm, so it's only my larval containers.
I'm going to be freezing this sub in batches and rotating it out, but I'm still definitely wondering how they got into my larval containers in the first place. Most of these larvae are over a year old, so I don't think it's anything they carried in with them, I can't imagine worm eggs surviving the pressing process that makes oak pellets, and I wash my hands and tools (for scooping) between containers to avoid transferring mites, etc., so how did they get into every single container?
Things That Make You Say, "Huh," for $600.
Edit: Correction: I do have two flower beetle larvae containers that use found oak leaf litter substrate, but I don't use any of my fermented sub with that, so there shouldn't be any cross contamination going on there, plus it has been frozen twice. Additionally, that sub and my other sub doesn't ever get handled on the same days as my other containers just due to receiving the larvae between my monthly beetle checks.
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