The short answer is that a properly balanced BSF colony has a very faint and even pleasant odor reminiscent of wet straw and whatever waste you’re processing. For example if you process strawberries or cinnamon bread in a healthy BSF unit it will smell very good. On the other hand if you process feces (caution advised) then it won’t smell so good depending on the type. Even when processing bad smelling waste I doubt that it would be strong enough for neighbors to notice unless they’re fairly close to the unit. I’ve processed a lot of whole fish and trimmings during very hot weather and my dense and balanced BSF colony processed it so efficiently that you could stand nest to the BioPod and not smell anything or even see a housefly.

I’ve never processed human feces but I have added dog feces to my colony. The effect was a noticeable odor but one that wasn’t much stronger than the fresh feces itself. One thing that I think would effect this is the churning action of the BSF which might serve to keep releasing the odor. Another factor that might lessen the odor is the speed at which the waste would be processed which as you noted is very fast. I hope more people will experiment with this and add to our knowledge.

Thanks.

How to know BSF larvae and house fly larvae??

I’m including a video I uploaded to photobucket. I shot the video shortly after 9PM tonight. The fish visible in the video was a 1.25 pound ladyfish that I kept – intending to use as redfish bait, but didn’t get a chance to go back out fishing. I added it to the BioPod at about 10:30 this morning. The video was filmed while I was wearing a headlamp and holding my camera in the dark, so please excuse the herky-jerky filming. You can see a range of grub sizes from under pinhead size to a good inch in length. It seems the bigger grubs lurk deeper in the pudding and the small to mid sized ones crawl up to devour the fresh food. The young, mid-sized grubs remind me of what it was like having teenaged boys living at home! I think the larger grubs have slowed their consumption and are just chillin’ and maintaining their weight until spring. There are WAY more large grubs in the BioPod than show up in this video. Seems like the smaller ones wanted to star in this one!

I think you’re seeing juvenile crawl-off because of overheating due to the density of your colony. I use three pieces of 1 X 4 lumber as shims to allow more ventilation:

I think you are right about that, Jerry! The past week I’ve been feeding the BioPod a minimum of 20 ounces of coffee grounds each day, 2 to 3 pounds of fish/fish offal, dog and cat feces from 3 dogs and 3 cats, plus kitchen scraps! In 12 hours, it’s all gone! MILLIONS of grubs have populated the BioPod! There is no smell – even with the feces and fish added daily! No houseflies dare approach the BioPod anymore either!

There are only maybe 6 or 8 mature grubs self harvesting each day. I think the big grubs are hanging out waiting for winter because the largest grubs in the bin are half again as big as the mature, self-harvesting ones! Unfortunately, the level in the Biopod is such that half the harvesting bucket is full every morning with immature grubs. I pick out the dark ones to add to the hatchery bucket and put the rest back in the BioPod. It’s just so full they fall through accidentally now! There is no longer any moisture problem in the bin either. In fact, I periodically add water when things start looking too dry.

Up until the cold snap last week, I was seeing 2-3 dozen adult flies every morning when I checked the hatchery bucket. Now that’s dropped to 6-8 each morning.

I still see an occasional adult laying eggs, but I think the egglaying rate is slowing too with the change in season.

I’m off tomorrow and plan to spend several hours reducing the pudding level in the BioPod. When the immature grubs achieve the size of the large grubs, it’s got to add several more inches to the level of the BioPod – just from the volumetric increase in the size of the grubs!

I am totally blown away by the surge in population in the past few weeks AND with the voracious appetite of those grubs! I truly believe I could double my feeding rate at this point without adverse effect! The problem now is I no longer have the space to do so until I lower the “pudding” level!

I’m going to order some eisenia foetida worms online to process the surplus pudding this winter. I’m also going to stop populating the hatchery bucket with pre-pupal larvae. I think we have a sufficiency of wild BSF here!

I’ll try and post photos soon!

It sounds to me like you have a very health, well balanced colony going.

My “pudding level” in my BioPod stayed consistant until the past few weeks. Basically, the grubs ate everyting I fed them. But I noticed an EXPLOSION in grub density a few weeks ago – coincident with a prounounced fall off in mature grub migration. Along with an explosion in grub density, the level in the BioPod rose appreciably – even though I have only slightly increased the feed rate. I believe the grubs themselves are several inches thick now – thus adding to the level of stuff in the BioPod. I am in a quandry about what to do. Few mature grubs are migrating, yet DOZENS of mature BSF are hatching every day from my “incubator bucket”. Egglaying seems to be continuing and the population is full of HUGE white larvae (no longer self-harvesting), several different mid-sized populations of larvae, and literally MILLIONS of tiny baby larvae less than a millimeter in length! The corrugated discs are still full of eggs!

The pudding is dry, fluffy and teeming with mixed sized grubs. I know I need to reduce the level in my biopod as it is nearly up to the top of the ramp. But I am afraid of losing an appreciable number of immature grubs if I do so. I’ve considered removing 5 to 7 gallons of pudding/grubs, setting them aside, then digging out the bottom layers of the BioPod pudding, setting it aside, restocking the pod with the grubs and pudding taken off the top, then using your methods of harvesting remaining immature grubs from the bottom half of stuff. I hate to do this with cooler weather here just a month or so away, but I gotta do something to reduce the level. I want a robust population for December thru February when the weather will warm up again here in southwest Florida, so I am open to suggestions for techniques to harvest the pudding, yet maintain my population.

Anyone here have ideas or suggestions? I could easily populate a second or even third BioPod with my current population!

You can certainly keep a BSF colony working year round. I’ve started a topic about winter operation at the BioPod forum: http://thebiopod.com/forum/index.php?topic=145.0

If you stop using BSF in the winter restarting is usually pretty simple, especially if they are common in your area. After culturing BSF during the summer you will have seeded the property with even more BSF than might be there naturally. Even if you feed all collected BSF to animals some will always escape and become adults. Even so it’s recommended that you allow something like 10% of the larvae to mature, pupate, emerge as adults and then mate. Every pair of BSF that completes mating represents a possible 500-900 eggs to repopulate your colony.