Feeder Holding Bin Cleaning

[naterowley]

Hi!

What do y’all do for cleaning the bins you keep your feeders in? I use critter keepers for my dubia and silkworms and a tote for the crickets. Where do you put your feeders when cleaning out their bins? Do you have warm spares ready to put them in and then clean the old one and just alternate? I lost my smell from covid in 2020 and it never came back so i can’t smell anything and my partner said the he can’t smell anything from them but i still try to clean them out once a week on my repti-chore day.

bonus points if you include pics of anything you DIY’d or bought that isn’t what i have lol I love pictures of everything or links to products

 

[MissSkittles]

I keep my breeding roach colony bioactively, which greatly reduces cleaning. Every few months I move out the adults and carefully sift thru to remove the nymphs and any detritus that the cleaning crew wasn't able to handle, and then return them. I also spot clean as needed if I've overfed them. I keep the nymphs separate and same as I do with crickets and all others, I have a spare container to place them in, either just while I'm cleaning or to alternate with. I have this strange 'thing' for buying plastic containers so usually have extra. Unless a large and deep bin is needed, I find lots of large food containers, which are perfect for silkworms and such at the dollar store. I probably have pics of my bins somewhere, but my iPad bit the dust last night and I'm not doing so great attaching pics from my laptop.

 

[Ghostbirb]

Hi!

What do y’all do for cleaning the bins you keep your feeders in? I use critter keepers for my dubia and silkworms and a tote for the crickets. Where do you put your feeders when cleaning out their bins? Do you have warm spares ready to put them in and then clean the old one and just alternate? I lost my smell from covid in 2020 and it never came back so i can’t smell anything and my partner said the he can’t smell anything from them but i still try to clean them out once a week on my repti-chore day.

bonus points if you include pics of anything you DIY’d or bought that isn’t what i have lol I love pictures of everything or links to products

I have only a small amount of bugs, so I don’t have too many to move around when cleaning. What I usually do is transfer them to a different clean container and then clean out the original. Then when I’m done I put them back

 

[naterowley]

I keep my breeding roach colony bioactively, which greatly reduces cleaning. Every few months I move out the adults and carefully sift thru to remove the nymphs and any detritus that the cleaning crew wasn't able to handle, and then return them. I also spot clean as needed if I've overfed them. I keep the nymphs separate and same as I do with crickets and all others, I have a spare container to place them in, either just while I'm cleaning or to alternate with. I have this strange 'thing' for buying plastic containers so usually have extra. Unless a large and deep bin is needed, I find lots of large food containers, which are perfect for silkworms and such at the dollar store. I probably have pics of my bins somewhere, but my iPad bit the dust last night and I'm not doing so great attaching pics from my laptop.

I don’t have enough insectivores on duty in the household for a breeding colony YET unless they can be scaled and a colony can be a tiny little one, more like a family or two lol i still like the idea of learning the bioactive setup. I accidentally made a cricket breeding colony in my giant tegu enclosure when he decided that he no longer had interest in crickets since he’s a big boy now and decided to knock over the container and release them. I’m going to have to deal with this colony somehow, i find pinhead crickets SO tiny hopping around his water dish when i mist it’s wild LOL

 

[MissSkittles]

I don’t have enough insectivores on duty in the household for a breeding colony YET unless they can be scaled and a colony can be a tiny little one, more like a family or two lol i still like the idea of learning the bioactive setup. I accidentally made a cricket breeding colony in my giant tegu enclosure when he decided that he no longer had interest in crickets since he’s a big boy now and decided to knock over the container and release them. I’m going to have to deal with this colony somehow, i find pinhead crickets SO tiny hopping around his water dish when i mist it’s wild LOL

I don't see why you can't have a small dubia colony if you want. Not sure how big it would need to be to be worth it, but maybe 8 females and 2 males might be a good start. I just have them in the same soil mix I use for my enclosures and put in springtails and dwarf white isopods. I had tried dwarf purples, but they blended right in, so I don't know if they are still in there or not.
So you have a breeding cricket colony in your tegu's enclosure?! Yikes!

 

[Lindasjackson]

I have a very small breeding colony of dubia I keep in a small bin with egg crates in there. I feed them every 2-3 days and I have a small heat mat attached to the outside, side of the bin to give them the warmth they need to breed and it’s worked well. Now I do still buy dubias once in a while from either dubia.com or rainbow mealworms just to keep the colony fresh and going but that’s it. I only have one chameleon to feed so this is all I need.

 

[elizaann2]

I also kept my dubia in bioactives when I had them and I really loved that. My other bugs I just have extra bins so when I deep clean their bin weekly I just transfer them to a new clean bin.