Best way to lower humidity in your dubia roach bin?

Question: Best way to reduce humidity in you dubia roach bin?

My Setup: 40 gallon tote. 10" vent hole on one side of lid, 3 3" holes on the other side of the lid... covered with screen and also see-through curtain cloth to prevent flies etc. 2 foot by 1 foot FlexWatt heat mat under the bin. Temps controlled by Hydro Farm Jump Start thermostat. Temps stay around 85 degrees.

Diet: kale, apples, oranges, carrots, celery. Dry chow is made from starter chicken feed, flukers cricket gut load, tropical fish food flakes. I feed them every 2 days. Not much left overs in the bin, but some.

I've had my dubias for 8 months now and everything has been great! ive went from 30-40 dubia to 1000s now (2500-3000 maybe). Recently ive had a horrible fruit fly problem. i had maggots in the poop/frass, so I had to clean everything, throw away all the frass, replace egg flats, and start all over.

My problem now is the humidity in my bin is waaaaay to high. It's so high that if I put fresh veggies in the bin, about 12 hrs later, I have condensation all over the sides of my bin! it was also making the frass wet like mud in the bottom of my bin! This problem just started a few weeks ago. ive never had the problem of humidity being to high! I actually use to keep a plastic dish in the bin full of water to raise the humidity....

Anyone know what is causing the condensation and extremely high humidity in my bin now... and what can I do to lower humidity?

Add more ventilation. Without enough ventilation their breathing can add quite a bit of moisture to the air. The cloth may be keeping too much humidity in and your best controlling flies and such by not giving them good breeding conditions anyway.

I cut 3 more holes about 3-4 inches wide.... hot glued screen to cover them and also put the cloth over them to keep flies out. im hoping that will help! if not, im going to have to remove the cloth... but then ill have the fruit fly problem! they always lay eggs in the frass. I breed dubia, superworms and crickets... and I have 2 bearded dragons, so I always have veggies laying out in the house somewhere. my fruit fly traps work. I catch 50 in one trap within a few days, but they always seem to keep coming back and multiplying! it's weird because u rarely see them flying in the house when you are watching tv etc, but I catch 100s in my traps and once a week I have to throw away all the frass because theres 100s of little white maggots crawling around in my bin!

The frass shouldn't be that wet. It shouldn't be wet at all, really. Do you put the veggies on a plate?

yes, I do put veggies/fruit on a plate... and water crystals in a plastic lid.

its so humid in there, I have condensation on the sides of the tote and lid and my frass stays sloppy wet like mud!

I added 3 more ventilation holes that are about 3" round.... I think my problem is the see-through cloth I put over all of the vent holes to keep fruit flies out. even the it's very thin and see-through cloth, its not allowing air to flow through my tote.

my hydrometer is @ 99 percent with the lid closed. even with a 10-11" vent hole on one side and 6 3" holes on the other side! I propped open the lid last night so I had a 2" crack on the cool side. when I woke up this morning, the humidity had went down to 83 percent!

Animals release moisture when they exhale, including insects. You may not have noticed the issue until the colony grew but if you are able to keep it dry you shouldn't need the cloth which i suspect is the issue. I'd suggest cleaning everything out, making sure it's dry and not feeding them for a few days, or at least not more than they will eat in a few hours, until you get the humidity under control. You may need to feed a dry chow for a time until the fruit fly situation is dealt with. (Also make sure they are fruit flies, not something else like gnats or phorid flies)