Cleaninig/sorting the dubia bin
- Thread starter MSMorgan
- Start date
jpowell86
Chameleon Enthusiast
I have never seen this method before. Thanks for sharing. Unfortunately, I do not have a better method than this....in fact, I don't think I would call what I do a method at all, lol.
MSMorgan
Avid Member
J. you have my curiosity. What is your method?
jpowell86
Chameleon Enthusiast
So, I have quite a large colony going now, so keep in mind that if I miss a couple nymphs here and there I don't sweat it.
I have a long 5 foot bin that I keep mine in. I have 1/3 of the bin that is bare..no egg crate, no bowl...nothing. I super glued a 1" strip of wood spanning the width of the bin at the 1/3 section. When I do my separating, I simply take the egg crates out and as many roaches as I can and put them aside in another container. Then I simply lift the bin and let all the junk fall to the bare side of the bin, making sure that everything goes over the strip of wood. Then I make sure all the frass is as evenly dispersed as possible, put delicious fresh food on the other side of the bin with some egg crate and wait. In about an hour, all the little nymphs will have made there way back over to the other side, leaving nothing but the frass(maybe some stragglers) on the partitioned side. Then I shop-vac that mess out.
This works for me, because I don't go through the trouble of separating my colony out by size. Once, sometimes twice a month, I remove a large majority of my breeder size dubia and trade with a fellow reptile enthusiast for his crickets. So, we keep each other supplied at all times.
This is why I don't worry about over crowding in my bin....plus I have an army of Melleri!!!
Hope that doesn't disappoint.....but like I said....not much of a "method"! Lol.
My colony is about 2000 now so with my method takes about less than 10min,if you have a larger colony,then I think @jpowell86 has a great method instead of poking holes in those bucket in those video,unless you are prepareing to open a dubia INC business for whole lots extra roaches ready to shipped out.
MSMorgan
Avid Member
J., Very interesting. I'll have to give your method a shot.So, I have quite a large colony going now, so keep in mind that if I miss a couple nymphs here and there I don't sweat it.
I have a long 5 foot bin that I keep mine in. I have 1/3 of the bin that is bare..no egg crate, no bowl...nothing. I super glued a 1" strip of wood spanning the width of the bin at the 1/3 section. When I do my separating, I simply take the egg crates out and as many roaches as I can and put them aside in another container. Then I simply lift the bin and let all the junk fall to the bare side of the bin, making sure that everything goes over the strip of wood. Then I make sure all the frass is as evenly dispersed as possible, put delicious fresh food on the other side of the bin with some egg crate and wait. In about an hour, all the little nymphs will have made there way back over to the other side, leaving nothing but the frass(maybe some stragglers) on the partitioned side. Then I shop-vac that mess out.
This works for me, because I don't go through the trouble of separating my colony out by size. Once, sometimes twice a month, I remove a large majority of my breeder size dubia and trade with a fellow reptile enthusiast for his crickets. So, we keep each other supplied at all times.
This is why I don't worry about over crowding in my bin....plus I have an army of Melleri!!!
Hope that doesn't disappoint.....but like I said....not much of a "method"! Lol.
caietaro
Member
My Dubia colony isn't huge (probably around 1,000 but I honestly haven't tried to count!). I have them in two separate containers; one is the breeding colony and the other is the feed-off/grow out bin. When I want to clean them and/or pull out nymphs from the breeding container, I start by simply moving the egg crates into an empty bin which brings 90% of the adults and larger nymphs with them. Then I use a sand scooper/sifter (I think the one I have is ZooMed) to sift the frass over a trash bag or bucket. The smallest nymphs are still too big for the sifter so then I just dump them into the grow out bin. I don't have a good method yet of getting the rest of the nymphs out that are on the egg crate with the adults.
