I got a box of mealworms for my Leo from the petstore today and they're very small, but they're very small. (They didn't have any other sizes, and Mojo was hungry!) I'm feeding them fish food flakes and some lettuce. How long will it take them to reach normal size? My Leo's accepting them happily now anyway, but just out of interest? Just because I'm trying to fatten up my Leo.
Welcome to the forums binge90 =) Mealworms growth rate depends on a number of factors, with temperature being directly proportional to their growth (to a point). The higher the temperature, the faster their metabolism, and therefore the faster they grow. Generally if you keep mealworms at room temp, or around 75 degrees they will grow from egg to beetle in about 3 months. If kept up to 85 degrees you might knock off a couple of weeks. I would say if yours are only about a week or two old, you have another good month or so kept warm and with a good food supply before they are pushing their medium to larger size (about 3/4" ish). They do grow relatively quickly, and once they reach the desired size you can place them in the refrigerator to slow and even stop their growth...assuming you haven't fed them all by then =P A good quality gutload will also also aid both the growth of your worms and the health of your leo, lettuce is generally low in nutritional value and high in moisture, but some fish food is OK. Try some other veggies and greens for moisture needs and make sure dry food is available at all times, most people use bran or oats as a living medium although nutritional benefits in both is only so-so. There are some quality gutloads out on the market that you can purchase (or look up recipes for) or you can make your own using a number of things at your disposal to up nutritional value...such as some dry cereals, even those fish food flakes, and various commercial ingredients and supplements such as your multivitamin, calcium, spirulina algae, and bee pollen.
An easy way to give them some warmth is to put them on top of your refrigerator in their container, or like me, i have a shelf directly above my computer monitor and i sit the container up there. But basically as said above warmth and food (including their substrate) will get em growing fairly quickly. A good substrate to put them in is baby cereal or wheat bran.
