Holes in Lid Container?

[Porky1961]

Hello All,
The silkie eggs that I got from Coastal have begun hatching in the petri dish. When I dump them from the petri dish into a plastic shoe box, should I keep a lid on that container to prevent the silkes from crawling out or can't they crawl up the smooth plastic sides.

Thanks MARK

 

[Chameleons Northwest]

They WILL crawl up the sides. Generally, you cut out most of the lid and replace it with screen, that you glue on with hot glue. Otherwise, once they get big enough, you will have these guys all over the place.

 

[mika]

From my experience, buying really small (like teeny itty bitty) silkworms in a petri dish from mulberry (all 500 of them in 1 dish), when I transferred them to a shoebox I never had a problem with them escaping from it as long as I kept them fed all the time and they had room to move.

I also used a regular bulb (like 40 or 60 watt) and hanged it over the shoebox with a thermometer in the inside middle of the shoebox.

The pic below was when they were a little bigger so I transferred them out of the petri dish and gave them more food. They sure eat a ton! Oh by the way, this is not even a shoebox (sorry), its a small glad disposable container (the ones you put food in).

Also in the beginning I used to place a lid with holes just to keep the temps right because the only bulb I had was a 40 watt household bulb and for me to maintain the correct temps I had to put a lid on it otherwise it would be too cold for them and they might die. Then condensation would build up inside the container so I would have to remove the lid during the daytime and wipe the moisture.