Forum Updates

The forums Re-Launch has lead to many new people joining and posting all about dermestids and their questions are answered usually right away. Of course next week i may be too busy to be on my forum as much :( oh well that is why i have created the Co-Admin being my friend myrm i can trust him as he runs his own forum:
http://myrm.proboards.com

Btw i thought i'd mention the forum stats as well in this post:
700+ posts
22+ members
2 Staff members
Why not join today?

http://dermestids.lefora.com

Dermestid Beetle Experinces Of 2011

Since it is winter all the other invert hobbies i am into are dead[i have to hibernate them unlike dermestids].
Of course this is a dermestid blog so we can talk about them all year round. I have recently started an O.F.C but that is for a diffrent topic.


This topic is about what i plan on doing this winter and early 2012. This winter i have planned a few intreasting things including:
Over-Feeding Challenge Year 2 x2
Sock Eating Challenge Year 2 Revisited
Anything anyone else asks me to do.

All of these will be helpful for my dermestid colonies and should help increase my population size. Of course since this is winter and the weather outside is cold that means the weather inside gets warmer so in a way its summer for the Dermestids.

Forum ReLaunch

The forum has been lost [or it has been neglected by me :P ] Anyway i've since then made a new and more productive forum. Its all about dermestids. It has some posts that i either didn't want to or never bothered to post here. This includes a full review on 2011 Over-Feeding Challenge and such ;) .

Anyway its free to join and easy to post. You can ask any questions regarding dermestids and me and others will answer them to the best of our knowledge. The forum has the following stats:

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  Members:

  22  (1 online)





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  656





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  Founded:

  1 year, 5 months ago





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  Newest Member:

  jon

  Since i have started it a year [more then a year as you can tell ;) ] i have added a mod to the forum although he has been inactive for quite sometime so i may be looking to add a new member of staff to the table. Our secondary admin to be Myrm will be one most times that i am not. Especially at night time or when i get grounded deal with other things :) anyway feel free to join and if you have any questions on how to post PM the following:

  Dermy [me]

  Myrm[Secondary Admin ] http://dermestids.lefora.com

Attangenus unicolor/Dermestes lardarius colony

Since i started these colonies[at one point they were two diffrent colonies] i have learned a lot about dermestids. So i wanted to test this out and so begins my dermestid colony. It is sitting at 120+ dermestids and thus is growing quite dec.

In the winter time [in about 1 month or so] i will begin my Winter O.F.C for my dermestid colony. [As well as other creatures ;) ] If i do an O.F.C i'll make sure i share all the information and statistics of the O.F.C.

My colony update

So ever since i started my ceral only challenge my attangenus colony has been booming. It is at 130+ individuals. So far its been 270+ days since i started it from 2 individuals.

On a side note they have eat over 100+ Pieces In Counting!


P.S Its my Birthday soon!

100 Blog Posts

This is pretty Cool we have 100 Blog Posts.

This is a trubute to cody's[er koolkid] Dermestes Lardarius colony, which is slowly on the rise at 30+ and they are all adults. My attangenus are all larvae and guess what he will be doing an OFC with me! More detials later!

How many Did you start with?

My friend Tyler asked me how many Attangenus beetles i started out with.

Here is the answer: 2 1 male 1 female.

Now i have way over 100!

OFC

This winter i will be conducting an OFC with my Attangenus colony, stay tuned for the detials on that later......................

Attangenus unicolor The Big Boom

So since my last unicolor update, the colony has boomed. It has really taken hold of the new Ceral Challenge i started a couple of months ago. So far they have been eating relitivly well and new larvae are being born every day! By two months i should have enough for the big OverFeeding Challange around the time of Winter.

BTW if i'm not here in the next couple of days or so it's b/c i am very busy with dermestids, worms, ants and soon wasps[wasps in the winter sounds intreasting!]

Anyway thought i'd post this and keep the blog alive.

Day#249-Attangenus unicolor

Day#249-The Attangenus colony is doing well. Sitting at way over 100. Since the start of the bin they have shown a great deal of potential and in the next few months will be continuing their Dermestid Ceral Challenge. Which is where you feed them only ceral for as long as you want. I'm doing this to see the effects of one food on a colony for a long time. So far its been 24 days and they've eaten over 50+ pieces of ceral! Of course the population has been on the rise ever since the day i started the Ceral Challenge. When i started the Challenge i had 55 larvae now i have 100+ larvae in the colony. The frass has been cleaned once since i started the colony. It had 1 inch of frass.

Combining Colonies

So ever since my two colonies have been breeding i had been woundering keep them split or merge them into a super colony[not that super lol] so i have decided to try it. I merged them right before i went to my grandmas. So far so good i think i'm gonna keep them merged and maybe split them when i have thousands of dermestids so the colonies stand a good shot at the world. Also they can breed more for my Winter 2011 Dermy OverFeeding Challange!

Comments and Questions are welcome!

OverFeeding Challanges: A Brief Overview

Since someone recently asked me on our forum about O.F.C's i've decided to make a post on the forum.Thanks to compostguy for reminding me to place it onto the blog for others to see, For your information this was made on a diffrent forum in 2010 right before i actually made the O.F.C jump:

Well before i even start this overfeeding challenge i wante to discuss with you people about some things so i don't get too many questions. I'm not trying to say that i don't like questions i go by the old saying of "The only stupid question is the one you don't ask." Anyway onward to more stuff.
Well what is a overfeeding challenge anyway? Well thats a good question. An overfeeding challenge is  when you decide to overfeed a colony of whatever species that you have. Dermestids are perfect for this experiment as the aren't used to overfeeding so it should call for a pretty cool experince for both of us[me and the dermys] anyway here are some more questions answered.
What type of food are you gonna be feeding them? Well i thought that just dog food and cat food as meat would spoil and kill the colony. Now of course i will be measuring how much i put in the bin and add it all up in the end. My goal is to reach 10 pounds or maybe 20 pounds. Then when i do this experiment next season[or this winter] i hope to have over 30-50 pounds of food gone. Of course thats over a four months or five months of feeding. I plan to add in new food every week or so. When the 1 month mark rolls around i'll just allow the bin to mellow out for 1-3 weeks until i can add more food waste into the bin.
Hope this answered most of your questions if you have anymore feel free to comment below thanks for viewing this blog post and i wish you luck in  dermy keeping as a hobby!

Hope this will shed some light on OverFeeding Challenges.

Plans for Winter 2011.

So you may be woundering why i'd be talking about winter in the middle of nice hot summer time, well unlike most dermestid keepers i prefer to be more prepared for what lies ahead, that includes winter. Since winter is such a slow long process i have decided to make some plans for this winter. Here is what i have so far,
 Dermestid O.F.C [yes i know i'm already doing one right now but hey it's just practice for this O.F.C ]
It should last all winter long. So far my food goal will be about 550-700+ Pieces In Counting or simply P.I.C.
O.F.C's are a fun way of wasting time so winter shouldn't be that slow this year especially since i'm not restarting my dermestid colonies in the winter. At one point i thought if they lived together for more then a year they'd be prone to a few reproductive disabilities and mutuations could/would accoure with the next generations until they weren't even reganized as larder beetles and then they could escape and rule the world bc no-one would know what their natural enemies would be. Okay a little over-dramatic but still nothings impossible after the fire ant, argantinia ant, killer bee ect...

Anyway that's just what i have planned for winter i plan to make it last all winter long at least, maybe into spring/summer. Who knows maybe i'll be the first to have a 1 year long dermestid overfeeding challenge!

-dermy

The Forum

So about 1 year ago i created a forum all about dermestid beetles. Well today it's gained quite some people on it and i hope some more will join in the future. I've learned a lot from the members and they've probably learned a lot from me. So if you have any dermestid related questions feel free to ask on our forum:
http://dermestids.lefora.com/
There is a lot of diffrent people who can help you including me. They all specilize in a certian species of dermestid. Mine is of course Dermestes Lardalius.

Dermestids Day#570+

Okay the blog has been dead for quite a while but here comes a much needed update on my dermestid beetle colony. The colony itself is doing good, great actually! I have 120+ and they are breeding like mad. Now onto the less discussed project, my OverFeeding Challange or O.F.C. Its been going on for quite some time, around 6 months into it and i have over 250 Pieces In Counting. Not too shabby for a colony that was started from one gravid female 6 or so months ago. Soon enough ill be into a full swing OFC then we'll see what dermestids can really do. Until then its a slow process to prepare the colony for the big leagues, a full scale OFC Project for the ages.

New Label: Journals of 2011

Since i've been so busy making journals this year on my now amazing dermy colony i thought i'd give them their own special label that i'll be adding onto all journal entries for this year and possibly the next one to keep them organized and so others can view them post by post and never miss one.

Harvesting Revisited/Cont.

What is harvesting?
Harvesting is when you take a colony of dermestids that haven't been cleaned in ages and decide to harves the beeltes/larvae from the colony as well as cleaning out their old container for another busy year of dermestid keeping.

When should I harvest?
You should harvest at least once a year if not more then that. Usually when the container is to the point where you can't find what your looking for,[Dermestids ect...] then its time to harvest your colony. The colony shouldn't be left to fend for its self, ie if it needs to be cleaned clean it as soon as you can or it'll take even longer. The longer you wait the harder it is to clean. When to harvest also depends on how big the dermestid colony is and how much frass they make in a certian time frame. Some need cleaning once a month were as others need cleaning once every 2 months.

Why Harvest?
You need to harvest in order for you to see the dermestids. Also the frass can be fatal to the enviroment and can be bad for the health of the colony. Also harvesting helps to get the dermestids into breeding mode. Since they mate more often the total population goes up considerably and can lead to population booms.

Hope this helps you in harvesting a dermestid colony.

New Tamplet

Since it is spring i've decided to change the background to a spring one i'll be changing it every month or so depending on the season ect..

Day #532 Dermestes Lardarius Update

Day#532-Well its been quite a while since my last update and these guys have exploded in numbers i now have over 110. They have been eating way better and since the fact that the population is so high they eat way more too. I can't wait till the fall so I can do stuff with them!

Jot Notes So Far!

-Preventing larder beetles [Dermestes lardarius] is often the best approach in control as if they never get into your house you wouldn’t need to control them


-Larder beetle control methods usually depend on three things:

1-Season- In some seasons they are more active and are easier to scout out and find the source of infestation.

2-House Temperatures- Different temperatures in a home also effect how long it takes them to develop the temperatures also effect how often the larvae/adults wander away from their food sources.

3-Food sources- Food sources with higher protein content make the larvae grow faster; as well water helps the females produce more eggs. Example: Normally 1 female would produce,[on average] about 100-105 eggs but when water is normally available [such as in a bathroom] they can lay 250-800 eggs

-There is a variety of ways to go about control;

-Physical force- finding the infestation and either freezing them [And the infested material] at a low temperature for instance in your freezer to kill off all the life stages because if you just kill adults and larvae the eggs will just make more larder beetles in the next month.

-Insecticides- After you’ve found the source of the infestation [and you can’t freeze it] you should then use insecticides. If the spray doesn’t have the following chemicals it won’t work:

-Malathion

-Propoxur

-Diazinon

-Do not use insecticides in or around an area that children play in as the chemicals are harmful to the lungs.

-Cleaning- Without knowing where the infestation is it is often hard to actually kill all the larder beetles. Cleaning around where you find them and vacuuming them up will at least help reduce numbers. Cleaning isn’t really a good control method but it works for reducing the number of larder beetles in your home.

-There are a lot of different ways to prevent a larder beetle infestation from even accruing.

Chaulking- Caulking works in preventing the larder beetles from even entering the home in the first place. Firstly find all the openings were the larder beetles can get into a home.

-Next caulk holes in baseboards, roof, chimney openings, doors that have holes in them and anywhere else that seems like it could be a potential spot for larder beetles to invade into and breed.

Sources of the infestation:

-No matter how well you prevent them from getting in chances are you probably didn’t seal every last crack around the outside of your house.

-Even if you did they can still get in via an open window or just go in when you do.

-this is generally what happens once they get into your home,

-They find the nearest food source that is high in protein and begin to lay eggs

Finally

I can finally do a science essay on dermestes lardarius WOOP!

I;ll post my jot notes when i'm done em!

My Dermestid Colony

Day#525-Its been awhile but i think i've gotten the hang of dermestids, the colony has exploded to over 100+ and is still going!They eat so much now its insane. The colony has also been doing well in the kritter keeper and has started to chew on their bedding as well as make their own[frass] i think if they keep this up i'll have to clean them in around 3-4 months and will have 1000+ which will be good for what i plan on doing with the colony this fall[which no-one knows about]

Tutorial By Request[Rubra] Where can i find Dermestids???

Well thats a great question thanks rubra i've been asked this many diffrent times and well instead of answering it a million times lets just make a tutorial on where and how to find dermestids.
Carpet Beetles
These devils are found under furniture,carpets,old clothing and even in beds[mine at least] although during the spring months the adults[mainly females] may be found on windowsills trying to get outside. If you still can't find them then move onto the next dermestid beetle type.
Larder Beetles
These are found everywhere[and i mean everywhere!] I've foud them in my bedroom,kitchen,bathroom and heck even my basement has a few. They can also be found creeping up walls and on windowsills. I found a couple under the same the things as carpet beetles.
Baiting
So what if i still haven't found any? Well don't worry i have an almost fool proof plan. Just take some raw uncooked meat and leave it outside, After a few hours come back and see what you can find. Dermestes lardarius is sure to be there[Look at the pic at the top of the blog] larvae are often found as well. They are hairy and wiggle a lot[Dermestes lardarius larvae run faster] basicly any type of beetle that you find there is a dermestid[or something closely related] so if you find only a few adults don't worry they can still start a colony[i've started mine from 1 gravid female and now have 30+++]

Hope this answers your question rubra!

A blog post about Harvesting

Okay so as my colony just got cleaned a week ago i have decided to make a guide on Harvesting a colony of dermestids. There are a few steps to follow to get it done just right[well my way anyway]
Step1-Discontinue feeding
Step2-Feed a large food piece
Step3-Wait 25-45 minutes and take off all the dermestids [and any other ones you find] and place them into a new bin for now]
Step4-Continue step 2-3
Step5-After your done either get rid of the excess waste or keep it for a while and continue to harvest it[to get out some of the small babies]

Hope this helps you out on how to harvest

Burn and Bust Cycles

Okay so there are two things that a dermy colony can do throughout the year. It happpens diffrently for everyone and every colony[conditions are diffrent, food is diffrent, tempatures are diffrent ect...] anyway if youve ever noticed that when the colony has gotten a lot of larvae[This is known as a Hot colony] it will eat more. This is a burn cycle. Now if you don't see hardly any larvae[but there is a ton of beetles around and its not infested with ham beetles] then this is known as a bust cycle the colony eats less but the adults are busy making the next generation.

The burn cycles last longer at 30++ days where-as busts last around 12-20 days. These can increase/decrease depending on the tempature and the food being given to the colony.

Hope this sheds some light on why your colony isn't doing its thing!
[BTW it just so happens i'm in a bust cycle]

Day#504-Dermestid Beetle Update

Day#504- Well its been a long road to get here i've deffinately have hit my fair shair of fails and epic fails throughout this big whole project. I've done some amazing projects. Some of which i actually got good results for[Ex when i started my new colony off of 1 gravid female back in January 25th/2011] I do plan to do a lot more with this colony as summer ends[i'm busy in the summer doing wasp/ant related things] its a great thing these guys live off neglect[All i do is feeding them a huge ammount for the summer months and come back to a thriving dermestid colony!] All in all this colony has taught me a thing or two about dermestes lardarius and how they do their thing.

Anyway onto how the colony is doing up to date. So far i've actually started a new colony[No not with 1 gravid queen] of a diffrent species intirally! Its known as Attangenus unicolor. Its also commonly known as The Black Carpet Beetle. They breed really slow[Lardarius can get 2-3 cycles in before they even finish 1!] Anyway deffinatly stay tuned for a big project with them this fall!

As well the larder beetles will be doing a couple projects with me this fall of course that would mean i may have to split them at the end of the summer months up ahead anyway i'll figure that one out when the time comes. As well the lardarius colony is in a bust cycle right now :( [This is when there is a lot of beetles and next to no larvae.] It will surpase in a month or so.

Anyway hope this was a good enough update for you all

Hello Everyone

Hello to everyone out there. I am a new auther at Dermestid Files and as time goes by i will be posting questions and koolkid will be posting the answers to them. Eventually when i get a dermestid colony i will be posting up blogs as well. Anyway hope this will be a learning experince not just for me but for everyone.

-Compostguy101

Light VS Dark

Well this is a huge topic on weather or not Dermestids favor darkness or light, i hope to share some insight on both below:
Light
Advantages
You get to see them at work
They can be monitered without much disturbance
Disadvantages
In the light they seem to eat less fast[That doesn't mean they don't eat they just eat slower]

Darkness
Advantages
They work harder and faster
If your working on something gross it makes it less gross[IE your not seeing it as much as if they were kept in the light/clear bin.]
Disadvantages
The colony isn't as seeable[when you do it disturbs them lots]
The colony seems to be more flighty to light
Of course less viewing equals more worry[Ie are they eating are they done or not? ect...]

Hope this spreads some insight on light versus darkness

New Enclosure

I have a new Dermy Bug Box its a Kritter Keeper or just a KK for short. The KK has bedding unlike my other setups in the past as it seems to help boost the population up drasticly and i can still see them[They swarm like a colony of ants which is too cool! its one of those you have to witness it to belive it!] This setup is gonna be their spring through winter setup and who knows i may be able to use it next year!

Fall-Winter Diets[September-Febuary]

For a Fall to winter diet dermestid colonies should be watered only when they have adults in the population. They need high carbs and a tiny bit of protien[Up it in the case of Larvae explosions as they grow better] for carbs chocolate and some  candies work well. For protien dog/cat food and some meats are great for growth. Hope the diet section have been helpful

Summer Diet[June-September]

For summer months[at least for me] there is more larvae which means more protien and less water. Feed them cat/dog food and sometimes meat. Only water them weekly as larvae aren't big fans of water[Water + Dermestids = Dead Dermestids :( ]

Spring Diets[March-June]

For spring dermestid colonies[At least mine] are in the adult stage, thus they need more sugar[fattening agents] and more water. So during the spring months anywhere from march to june water them once every two days. Usually in the evening as this will mean they drink it more.

Lardarius Colony Update

So on
3/18/2011 I got 1 gravid female, well she[Now known as queen Doom ] has sprouted a good Dermestes lardarius colony the biggest i've had all season. Of course the season is just begging and the colony should sprout out to the thousands! The colony has 30-35 adults and so far only 1 larvae[I found him in the old enclosure which is a good sighn] anyway the colony has many females[Unlike my other colony Named Eves Empire which had all males except one and then she died :( ] so i think the colony will have a population boom/explosion in around 1-2 months if that. I have good high hopes for this little gals colony and hopefully its sucsess in the next few months will prove her worth lol. BTW in the fall i'm gonna split them and do an Over Feeding Challenge!
Anyway thats just this update
4/22/2011

 

Dermy Population Boom!

Well as of yestar-day i've gotten a boom in population! It's pretty epic. Now they can eat dead bugs in less then two days. Soon enough i can do a OFC.[Over Feeding Challenge]

Anyway just thought i'd update on them.

BTW i moved em into a smaller enclosure

New Background!

Got sick of the other one so injoy!

What Should I do?[LIST]

Okay so as i've said last post i want to know what i should do with my new dermy colony.
Here is what i've thought of and my friend thought of,
1-Let em grow to an enourmously outragously epic number then give some to my friend
2-Let the colony do my evil bidding and eat so much that it beats my Unicolor colony at eating.
[BTW Unicolor colony has eaten 200 pieces of dog food and 6 flies in the last 90 days! Yea i have no life so i can count that stuff LOL!]

Why??????

Okay so yet another noob mistake[Sheesh what next!?]
Anyway i went to feed the beetles one day and i found that i left the lid off! No beetles/larvae escaped but lardarius decided to pay me a visit. So now i have two Gravid Females. Of course i have them in a diffrent setup and currently don't have a clue as of what i should do, So anyone with an opinion should speak up open to anything exept skull cleaning[Too messy and gross for my parrents not me though i can see anything without grossing out! :) ]

Anyway post a comment if you can/want and then i'll go from there.
The attangenus is doing epic it seems that with spring comes a population boom hopefully it continues for a few weeks so my population gets back up into the triple digits[Currently at 27 was at 13 yesterday!] Of course with this boom comes the bad bust cycle in 75 days LOL! Oh well not like i care just gottta do as much food through the colony as possible so they get more population booms and stuff. Hope this didn't drift off too darn much!

-Dermy[BTW that means Dermestid just my version of it ;) ]

Bin awhile!

So i've been grounded still am for around 2 months now hopefully i get ungrounded soon. Anyway my Attangenus unicolor is doing well and has gained a small boom in population at around 20-30 mainly larvae. Anyway still no OFC as of yet. Anyway they are doing well on their diet of dead flies and dog chow. Since i know someone will ask me this; carpet beetles don't clean skulls[as far as i know] so they eat cerals and dog food. They also eat good old dead insects. They are usful in the fact that they only eat dead bugs so they make great cleaners for lets say a cockroach colony. Anyway thats it for this post.
DermyKingOf Doom!

Attangenus Unicolor

Okay so my old species of dermestids have died out so i've since started a new colony i've only had it for a few weeks[i think 2 months] and it took me forever to get babies to turn into adults i'm just at my second generation of larvae. Guess thats what you get for starting with five larvae and then find out that out of those five one is a female and the rest are males. It means i wasn't able to reach 1-100 in one step oh well sooner or later i'll get 100+ then i'll be getting around 1000+ a month before long i'll have so many that i won't know what to do with them all. Thats when i'll start my second breeding bin and put all my adults in there and keep the larvae in the other enclosure. Then i'll be doing overfeeding challenges and other intreasting things with the species.

The reason why i said wait till i have 2 functional colonies is that i think my other OFC's failed to do 2 things:
1-Lack of experince
2-Lack of dermestids and a reinforcement colony

This time i hope that the table will turn the other way for the better. Anyway thats just an update! BTW i've been keeping dermestids for over 400 days!

~dermyking

Dermestids Colony Day #407

So its been a week since last update with these guys and they are doing well. I haven't yet decided on if i'm going to do an OFC yet this season or not. If i do i'll post updates on here the dermy blog.

So anyway here are the stats of the colony:
Larvae 16!
A slight increase not by that much but still once i get adults flowing in there will be tons more.
Adults can lay 250-500+ eggs in their live time.
The species for your information is called Attangenus Unicolor or the Black Carpet Beetle.

Anyway thats it for this update nothing really intreasting yet in the colony.

Dermy Colony Journal! Day#400!

Wow it has been a LOOOONG time since the last update. The colony is not doing so well now but hopefully it will pull through like the other colonies i've kept in the past. This colony sits at 11 larvae but by the next blog entry i hope to have 20-30+! That should give me a boost for the year to come[This year 2011!] and all my crazy experiments to come. So far though i thought for the time being i'd just sit back and watch them breed[well grow up and then breed] so i can be sure i have enough of them leftover for a reinforcement colony just in case. Its kinda like extra insurance for them and for me.

Well thats about it for now hopefully the next update will hold something cool and special if not oh well they are doing good for the size of the colony.

Back On [for a bit anyway]

So sorry guys [if you still even read the blog!] i have been busy lately and forgot completly about the blog. Don't worry though i still keep dermestids[Although i did take a short break from them in the summer time ]. Anyway hopefully the blog starts to pick back up again and i promise i'll make a blog post real soon!