Scared to clean my dubia bin! Suggestions?

suzi

Avid Member
Ok, lol the title of this thread pretty much sums it up! I will handle almost any creepy crawly but not these. I have tongs but am hoping I don't have to pick them out one by one( I will if I have to) any clever tricks?:confused: thanks
 
if you have egg crates let them be on them and put them in a temporary place

do the cleaning and place new eggcrates ,

then grab the old eggcrates with the dubias and just shake them off:p

well thats what i do, and pick the rest not the crate with your tongs , i just use my hands:D
 
I was thinking when I shook the egg crates to put them back in the clean bin all the old poo on the crates would go in also:eek: maybe if I shake the egg carton a day before, then do as you suggest the next day, hmmm that could work:)
 
I was thinking when I shook the egg crates to put them back in the clean bin all the old poo on the crates would go in also:eek: maybe if I shake the egg carton a day before, then do as you suggest the next day, hmmm that could work:)

oops forgot to mention that :p sorry, yeah that can work
 
Use a slim paint brush to sweep the frass into one corner and clean it, then shift the egg crates over to the clean side and do the same for the other end of the bin. All in all, their droppings and molts are dry and easily “sweepable” if you don’t use a substrate. You don’t even need to be too clean because the nymphs eat that stuff too.
 
I hate touching them too. What I did was I went to Walmart and bought some sand toys. You know the stuff kids take to the beach and play with the sand with. So I have a plastic shovel, and a sand sifting thinging. It works AWESOME!!!! I just scoop up the roaches, poop and all place them in the sifter and shake them around until the poop goes through. Then dump the roaches in the clean bin. The holes in the sifter are just smaller than the babies so even the babies don't falll through. I LOVE IT!!!! :D
 
I'm pretty good with a shop-vac. I just move all the hides/eggcrates to 1/3 of the bin, and suck up all the waste, and wipe down with wet/damp papertowels. Then flip the bin around and repeat to clean other 1/3 to 1/2 of bin.
 
Haven't tried it so it might not be true but I have heard that if you put some mealworm beetles in the bin they will pretty much keep it clean so that cleaning the bin is a bi-yearly thing...but what happens to the beetles frass?
 
I use a cricket keeper for my Dubias and when I need to clean them I just take the tubes out and place them carefully in a deep bowl and most of the Dubias are up in the tubes so I empty out the container after I scoop up free dubias that are still in the bin with a spoon LMAO! I hate roaches so I wont handle them or use tweezers on them because accidentally squishing them with tweezers would gross me out bad!
 
I hate touching them too. What I did was I went to Walmart and bought some sand toys. You know the stuff kids take to the beach and play with the sand with. So I have a plastic shovel, and a sand sifting thinging. It works AWESOME!!!! I just scoop up the roaches, poop and all place them in the sifter and shake them around until the poop goes through. Then dump the roaches in the clean bin. The holes in the sifter are just smaller than the babies so even the babies don't falll through. I LOVE IT!!!! :D

I do something similar to this. I take my dirty bin and a empty, clean bin outside. I remove the egg crates from the dirty bin, and shake loose the roaches into the clean bin. What's left in the old bin is mostly nymphs and frass. I then pour what's left into a large ~1/8" sieve, which catches all the roaches and let's their waste fall to the grass. Then I transfer the sieved roaches into the clean bin. The empty, dirty bin is then cleaned thoroughly with a bleach solution. I repeat this cycle about every month.
 
Thanks everybody! I got way more awesome ideas than I could have imagined:D I am going to try them all;)
 
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