u/Friendly_Respecter

To the people that gave me advice on encouraging the superworms to pupate, THANK YOU SO MUCH! Had to isolate the worms in a repurposed desk organizer for lack of any better resources, but as of now about 4/6 of the pupated worms have emerged as beetles! I don‘t have enough substrate (instant oats) to give them a separate enclosure from the still unemployed ones and won’t be able to restock for maybe 3-4 days, but is there anything I can do for them right now??? I’m a bit nervous about combining the life stages because the colony is quite large for the container already and I absolutely do not trust them not to cannibalize each other (or any eggs), so far I’ve just taken a few sprinkles of substrate from the worm box to give the new beetles something to eat while I work out what to do with them. How long should I give them before I move them into a less separated space (the underside of the organizer boxes) so they can hopefully mate? If they do lay eggs, how long until they hatch??? Thank you all again in advance!!!!

Recently got some darkling beetle larvae from a friend who had no use for them anymore, been keeping them for about a month now and the friend said they were about 30-31 days old when I received them. Currently keeping them all in a relatively big container with maybe an inch and a half of instant oatmeal as substrate, give them carrot slices every 2-3 days depending on how fast they finish them. I store them in one of the cooler parts of the house (only because the next best place is the garage, and it gets so hot down there I worry it may kill them) but indoors and out of the sun, rarely goes below 77 F. Box is lidded to avoid any house lizards getting in, so far still waiting on pupae and beetles. I’m starting to get a bit worried about how long it’s taking them to pupate, so lately I’ve been thinking about molts.

I used to get pretty regular molts in the first few days of caring for them, but for a long time now no one has seemed to be doing anything but circling the box and eating carrot pieces—the last time I saw any worms molt was when I accidentally let mold start to grow in the box and there was a massive humidity spike, which leads me to believe that lack of humidity is the problem. I would start misting the box or dropping some wet paper towels in, but my main issue is the risk of mold growing in there again, and the oats present a major obstacle. Is there a way to up humidity levels in the container without buying one of those little humidity regulator things or inviting fungus? Thank you in advance!