Dermestid Care:Part 3 General Maintence Of Your Colony

Dermestid Care:Part 3 General Maintence Of Your Colony
Once your dermestid colony is established you'll need to know about maintaining your colony.Usually maintence is only required once a week or so.Big maintence is only needed every 3-6 months.First we'll talk about Weekly Maintence.
Weekly Maintence
All you need to do weekly is check up on your colony and check on food/water.If you are on of the people who mists the papertowel you should do this once a week.If you use gel just check out the water gel and if it seems like it's lowering fast,add more.Now if the food is low add more food.If your one of those neat freaks[which is totally not needed!~] you can take out any of the dead beetles/larvae.If not forget about it they were ment to eat dead insects so if you leave on a trip and an hour later you think "damn i should have fed them!"no worries your covered!Next up is Big Maintence!

Big Maintence
This is only done 3-6 months but can be done every 9-12 months.I perfer every 3 months just to keep the inclosure a little bit clean.This comes in steps.I'll explain each step individually so it's easier to get it done!

Cleaning out the Dermestidarium!
The first step in Big Maintence!All you have to do is try to get all the beetles/larvae into a diffrent "holding container" then dump the frass into a ice cream pale and start sifting with the smallist sifter you have.You are likely to lost a few smallish larvae so do the sifting over the ice cream pail.Once you have most of the colony sifted add them into the holding container.Next take out the egg flats/crates/papertowel rolls and add them too into the holding container.
Now take hot water and wash out the inclosure for 3-5 minutes.[DON'T USE SOAP!] if you use food dishes clean these out the same way.

Drying the inclosure.
I thought this diserved it's own part as there is many diffrent ways to dry your inclosure.The first is with papertowel.You want the inclosure as dry as possible.Same rules apply for the food dishes.Next method is use an old wash cloth that is dry and do the same thing for both the inclosure and the food dishes.Once dry it's now ready for the next step!

Making the inclosure as good as new!
Okay now that you have a clean inclosure add the hides and food into the food dish or how you had the food last time.Next add more water gel or a papertowel misted once.Wait for about 10 minutes before adding them back into their Dermestidarium.Then add them back to their home!

Making multiple colonies!
Now lets say you have about 100-1000 dermestids,You should think about setting up another inclosure.[For more information on setting up an inclosure read this guide:http://dermestidfiles.blogspot.com/2009/12/dermestid-carepart-1-making-perfect.html ]
This is because setting up multi colonies can save your life in the long run.I'd suggest having 2-6 colonies going at once just in case one dies then you still have another one to replace it.

Well that concludes part 3 of the Dermestid Care!If you have any more questions or think i left something out p.m me on my forum or add a comment!
-koolkid
http://bugsnstuff.myfineforum.org/index.php