Rice flour beetles (Tribolium confusum) are small beetles that are used as pet food. The tiny larvae make good snacks for small frogs, ground beetles (referring to carabids), baby mantids, and other animals that require unusually small prey. This beetle is called a “rice flour beetle,” which is a name it shares with other members of the genus Tribolium. The species name “confusum” refers to this species being “confused” on how to fly. In other words, these beetles are flightless. This is a good thing because other rice flour beetles, such as the red flour beetle (T. castaneum), can spread into bags of flour and become a pest. As long as the flightless ones are prevented from walking out of their cup with a lid, they cannot become a pest. The ability to become a pest also makes it an even better feeder because most pests have to breed fast. In order to feed a number of animals, it is good to have something that can breed fast enough to keep up with their appetites.
There seems to be an absence of recipes for nutritious rice flour beetle media. Here is a recipe that works well for me.
- 1 cup Rice Flour
- 1/2 cup Wheat Flour
- 1/2 cup Wheat Bran
- 1 teaspoon Nutritional Yeast
Mix the ingredients and add them to a culturing cup. Add rice flour beetles and let the culture sit in a dry place for a month or more. By that time, there should be hundreds of offspring in the media. Sift the substrate to harvest them to feed to other pets. The culture will last for a number of months, and rice flour beetles make a good backup feeder because their cultures last so long.