I'm having a lot of problems with m

I'm having a lot of problems with my superworms dying off at an alarming rate. I had no issues with growing and breeding these guys until I had a grain mite infestation and became sick.

Back in October, my husband noticed these little white bugs hanging out on the lid for my superworm beetles. I always assumed it was dust from the beetles movement, but my husband drew attention to the fact the dust moving. Sure enough it turned out to be grain mites. Unfortunately that meant I had to throw out all my superworm beetles and mealworm beetles, along with the babies that were inside their containers. I kept the regular meal and superworms separated and away in another container, so they survived the great purge.

During quarantine, I became sick for a good two weeks and didn't tend to my feeders as well as I normally do. What ended up happening was, I had a massive superworm die off (I wasn't feeding them enough during this time) and when I finally recovered, I spent a lot of time picking the dead and dying superworms from the ones that survived. My meal worms didn't suffer all that much because I always had carrots in their container whereas I was feeding my supers romaine and red lettuce.

The threat of grain mite infestation is long gone, as I keep all my feeders bedding inside the freezer in ziplock bags. I monitor the containers closely and toss out old or dried up lettuce from the worm containers. I have some meal and super beetles breeding and producing babies, but not at the rate I had them before. Really depressing since before the infestation and me getting sick I had SO MANY! Easily a couple thousand with over a hundred beetles doing their thing. They were all healthy and I hardly experienced any worm die offs.

Now I'm having a problem with my superworms dying like crazy. My mealworms don't seem to be having too much problem (other than the expected die off you'd normally have). I don't know what is wrong with my superworms. I keep them in bedding that is oatmeal and bran that has gone through a food processor. I put in just enough for them to burrow in. Daily I give them fresh, clean romaine and red lettuce. Because it is now winter, the temperatures have dropped, so I keep my worms on top of my Leopard geckos cage on the opposite side of it's heat lamp. The temperature stays around 80-84. I do the same with my meal and super beetles on my other leopard gecko's cage with the temperature being the same.

Even with this extra care, I'm still experiencing more die offs than I am comfortable with. There is a lot of cannibalism going on (even with fresh lettuce offered daily!) on many sickly or dead supers I pick out and toss daily. They smell SO MUCH. UGH!: So much more than if one of the super beetles "sprayed" me in the face. I clean out their container weekly since the smell of the dead and dying is horrid. Even if the bedding still looks fresh, it gets tossed out and the container is cleaned in hot, soapy water.

I'm at a loss for what to do, so I've decided that I will feed off what I have and pay a visit to a supplier of feeders in my area ( Rainbow Mealworms and Crickets ) and start all over again. I haven't bothered separating any of the supers I have to force into pupa since I don't even know if they'll survive. I wish I knew what happened. Everything was going so well until the infestation and me getting sick.

I would appreciate any and all feedback on what could be going wrong so if with my new batch, if I see this sort of thing happening, I can nip it in the bud fast. I already learned the hard way to freeze all my bran and oatmeal, and to do the same if I ever use chicken feed again. I hope to never-ever experience a grain mite infestation ever again! I wish I knew what to do with my superworms, however. Even if they are feeders, I still feel bad for them.