Cleaning dubia bins

[Jess]

I've had my dubia for about 2 months now. How do I know when I need to clean out their bin? My bin is pretty small (about the size of a 5 gallon aquarium) so I'm not sure if I should be cleaning it more often.
And how am I supposed to get all the itty bitty babies out of the crap? I don't want to accidentally throw them away!

 

[Carnivorouszoo]

I've had my dubia 2-2.5 months I have not cleaned them out once, other than removing old food to put in new. My turkistans though I have cleaned out a couple times, they seem to have a higher output lol.

 

[JDRoaches]

You can use a colander to shake out the frass. I dump whatever is left on the bottom of my bins into a colander and shake away.

 

[TASTIGER]

i use a combination of a kitty litter scoop for the adults and a colander the little babies. i just cleaned out my colony thats in a big tank it took me almost 2 hours.

 

[Ostrommaysi]

It might sound awful but I just used a sweeper hose attachment to clean mine out. I had about 4 or 5 k Dubia too.

If you sift the nastiness around a bit before turning it on and continuously hit the side of the bin the roaches usually scatter away for the egg flats or anywhere else to hide. If your really careful you'll scarcely suck up a roach at all. Even with 5,000 roaches I still managed to only suck up a handful of babies each cleaning. (And I cleaned about twice a week, spoiled 6 legged monsters)

Naturally I had to switch sweeper bags a lot but honestly I couldn't be bothered to do it any other way. I could clean out the entire bin, which was about 40 in long in less then 20 minutes. Any babies I lost would be back in spades within a week. The only negative is sometimes... the sweeper doesn't kill them and you start wondering what your cat is playing with..

....yeah

 

[hartungs]

Ian has figured out a great way to do it. Here you go...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXJKrN6KSbU