D. Tityus rearing set up

[Phil Kuhns]

First of all, I am very new to raising beetles (never done it before). Below I will provide the details to how I created my D. Tityus grub-raising set up. I would then like to hear from those of you who have had expirience raising tityus what you think and if there is anything else I could do to increase my chances of keeping my 5 L2 grubs alive and healthy.

 

Substrate prep: I collected a 5 gal bucket full of very rotten rardwood out of my woods and, bit by bit, microwaved all of it for 2 minutes in an attempt to kill anything harmfull. I then baked a bunch of dead leaves and crushed them up until I had mostly filled a 1 gal ziplock bag. I then filled a 1 gal ziplock with rotten wood, and another one with compost cow manure. I mixed those two bags along with my bag of leaves and poured that mix into a 5 gallon aquarium filling it up about 5 inches deep.

 

Lid: I made my own lid for the aquarium out of duct tape, window screen, copper wire, and plastic wrap. I designed it to open and close but the only concern is that the uneven wire frame prevents the container from being sealed, leaving gaps. However, I think it is ok because the inside walls seem to have alot of moisture on them.

 

Other than spend 2 hours scraping out the sillicon in the aquarium, that is basically all I did in preparation. The 5, small grubs are now inside and seem to be doing well, but I would like some feedback from those with more experience than myself. I have attached some pics of the fully loaded aquarium. (do the pieces of leaves look too big? most of it got pretty powdery when I was crushing them, but alot of it was also about 1/4 inch sized pieces.)

 

 

[Dynastes]

It sounds good overall. The one thing to watch is when they're near pupation the substrate should be rather damp. The grubs are fine with damp to barely moist substrate but pupal cell formation requires high moisture. Large leaf particles may be eaten if they're buried.

[Phil Kuhns]

Thanks! I will probably put them in just compost manure when they are ready to pupate. the leaf pieces are mixed all the way through the substrate so they should get eaten.