# Rice Flour Beetles - How to separate them!?



## OmerFriedman (Mar 29, 2010)

Hi

I was given a culture of rice flour beetles in a plastic container. I was told that frogs only like the larvae but not the adults. Anybody have any experience with these and know how to efficiently separate the bugs from the flour, and the larvae from the adults?

Thanks!


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## karag (May 12, 2005)

Very tedious... I use a strainer to sift them and pick them up with a spoon one by one.
I feed them to my fish. I guess you have to put them in a container like a plastic cup lid and hope your frogs will notice it.
I don't have frogs right now.


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## radiata (Jul 24, 2010)

Josh's Frogs sells a "Rice Flour Beetle Media Sifter" for $0.99 that you might want to try.
Josh's Frogs - rice flour beetle media sifter - rice flour beetles
I haven't gotten around to ordering mine yet...


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## Rain_Frog (Apr 27, 2004)

Honestly, rice flour beetles aren't worth it IMO.

I keep birds, and I have found tons of dead beetles in corners of their room in the carpet, or occasionally the wood pellet bedding at the bottom of the cage. I have never been able to eradicate them fully, and I would rarely use them for food for my frogs.

My dart frogs and mantellas prefer to eat mealworms-- you just have to use young ones but tincs can eat sizable ones.


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## OmerFriedman (Mar 29, 2010)

yeah, seems like its not worth the hassle...


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## TDK (Oct 6, 2007)

What I do is first sift the flour and get the bugs and larvae out of the flour. The sifter is large enough for some of them to sift or escape through (I don't know the sifter size) and all of the flour to pass. Then I take the stiff cardboard back from a note book and dump the contents onto the cardboard. It's a race from here. I take a small stiff paintbrush and brush the beetles back into the original container and the larvae into another separate container. After that I use a fine sifter, that the larvae can't pass through, and bounce the remaining flour off them, then dust and sift with a supplement if wanted and feed to the frogs. I feed them about once per week. sometimes you can have thousands from a single shoe box container. I keep 3 or 4 colonies going.


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

There was a simple method published in the old ADG... Sift the media to collect the adults and the larva. Once they are sifted dump the beetles and larva into a shallow dish that will contain the larva. Place the dish containing beetles and larva into a container to contain the adults and place a piece of papertowel so it extends from the dish into the larger container. Come back in an hour or so, and the beetles should have used the towel to escape the dish. 

An alternative method is to not replace the adults into the older culture but place them into a new culture and sift them out after ten days. This will allow you to harvest the larva from the culture without the adults. Simply hold back some larva to get new adults to seed new cultures. So every ten days or so you should be setting up cultures with new adults and harvesting most of the larva out of the older cultures so you don't have the issue of removing the adults for feeding. 

With that said, I have had a few frogs take the adults so you can try some on your frogs and see how they do with them. 

Ed


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## bricespice (Jan 4, 2010)

So are the beetles harmful for the frogs or frogs just dont prefer them?

I first fed a few beetles and my WC tincs loved them.

IMO, these are a hassle to feed and not worth the time. But maybe I just need to get my culture producing a LOT more to make it worth my time.

Heres what I do.

I sift the flour from the larve and beetles with a fine tea strainer. The larger strainers have too large of gaps and the beetles and larvae will fall through.
Mini Tea Strainer

If you then leave the strainer in the culture tub and come back 30 minutes later, ive found most if not all of the beetles have crawled out of the strainer, and im left with the larvae in the strainer.


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