Getting ready for round 2

After our catastrophe, I cleaned out the growth chamber where our BSF were stored. It was difficult to clean due to several parallel thin grooves that even my abnormally small fingers could not fit in to. I was able to clean it out about ~80% but will come back with my car vacuum later to make sure it is 100% clean- in case this in any way affects our BSF.

There were many carcasses of insects in the growth chamber. I took samples of them, and we were able to identify them as rice weevils. The fact that the experiment before ours had a 100% mortality is not a good sign. Is this the curse of growth chamber #4?

But luckily rice weevils are benign and likely did not have an adverse effect on our BSF.

BSF are photophobic so I plan to cover the containers with a towel, once our second shipment arrives.

I also emptied out the containers that held the BSF, after of course making sure that not even a single little guy survived. I noticed a peculiar musky sort of odour as I opened the container.

Next time I will replace the coffee filters (that cover the ventilation square holes) with a very fine mesh. Perhaps this will allow more water vapour in to the container and since BSF prefer humidities that are quite high (> 75%), hopefully round 2 will prove more successful.