Most of my gear is here! In addition to covering up, I took this picture on a potato, so here's what you're looking at:

  • Right, on top of box, clear: graduated cylinders

  • On top of box, metallic: scale

  • On top of box, green plastic: bucket sifters

  • Center, background, white plastic: trays the project will expand into

  • Center, foreground, red and black: ur tct (them-crush-thursday)

  • Left, on top of table, black plastic: take-out containers that currently house the project, 1/3 of which is pictured.

  • Left, orange: Uncle Ben's packets - now that's another project for another time.

Not pictured: My records where I keep track of everything. Current rate of survival of larvae to adulthood: about 92%. Current reproduction rate: unknown, but I'm already seeing hundreds of offspring in containers that got laid in for <4 weeks; in another 2 weeks the bucket sifters and scale will help me find out more accurately.

Currently everything has cost about $450. In about a week, ur tct will be buying $250 worth of samples from several different live feed companies. If my carpentry-inclined moist Maoist friend hasn't built me a rack by then I will go by the hardware store and cobble one together myself. I have enough room for maybe 2 or 3 of these racks in my home. In about 1 month I'll have an idea of when I will outgrow my living space, and how much I will be producing at that time.

This post is dedicated to the first 800 very hungry caterpillars larvae, all of whom got to live a better life than they would have in the wild.

    • wax_worm_futures [comrade/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Just growing mealworms. They get fed oats and bread crumbs and carrots, and sometimes celery or potato shavings or whatever else I've been cooking with.

        • wax_worm_futures [comrade/them]
          ·
          2 years ago

          The plan is to sell them as live feed to pet shops and zoos and online to pet owners. In doing so I'll be competing with my erstwhile employer from the past 2 years. If I can get sales going and expand into a dedicated facility, I know I can compete them into the ground. But before I do this I need to figure out how long it will take me to get a population up to 2 million. Best case scenario, 2 generations. Worst case, maybe 4 generations.

          I also plan to collect kitchen scraps from restaurants and sell the insect waste to farmers and gardeners.

      • forcequit [she/her]
        ·
        2 years ago

        the larvae of the darkling can subsist on polystyrene & water, could look into a second population fed only this material as a recycling/waste disposal service/experiment?

        • wax_worm_futures [comrade/them]
          ·
          2 years ago

          I do plan on experimenting with this. I don't have particularly high hopes for the success of a plain-bugs method, which I would measure by being able to completely break down plastic matter into ubiquitous organic building blocks.

          The concern is that the mealworms (or waxworms) would only break down some of the plastic, leaving microplastics that would need to be eaten again but probably would get missed. What's more likely to work is a digestion chamber stocked with gut microbiota from these insects, but that takes a lot more specific expertise.

          Mainly I'm hoping to get all the frass sold off to farmers as a soil amendment, that'd be a win for me. Once the operation starts making money, I'll run the plastic digestion experiments and whatever happens happens. Either way I'm going to be looking at pyrolysis as the most promising form of plastic waste disposal, and building up local capacity for that.