Easy way to dust your feeders with calcium or vitamins

[Tonja]

Here is a suggestion for dusting live prey for your beardie and it works great. If you have a parmesan cheese container with the double flip up lids it will work great. On one side of the lid is the shaker side with the round holes and the other side the pour side with the one large half moon looking opening. Take the lid off the bottle after its washed, and put screen over the shaker hole side with a bit of hot glue. Close that side of the lid and drop your calcium in the half moon side along with your crickets. Roll the bottle over a counter or surface coating your crickets or live prey. Open up the shaker side and shake out the excess calcium <I put it back in the calcium container> and there you have your lightly dusted crickets ready to feed from the cheese container. Open the half moon side and shake the crickets out into what ever you are feeding in.

 

[CooperDragon]

That sounds like a pretty good way to preserve the excess dust. Do the crickets come out of the cheese container easily?

 

[Tonja]

I haven't had a problem with them coming out. Open the half moon side and shake them out..the sides of the plastic bottle are pretty smooth so they don't really cling to the sides well. You can even take the top off and shake them out.

 

[CooperDragon]

Sounds good! Thanks for sharing your idea.

 

[Tonja]

You are very welcome!

 

[diamc]

Good idea.

 

[Harley]

You shouldn't re use the waste. By the time you are done shaking the bugs the calcium is no longer pure. It has fecal waste, wing pieces and, exoskeleton. With the very low cost of calcium why bother reusing now contaminated powder. Besides, if you use the proper amount to begin with you won't have enough waste to matter anyway.

 

[Tonja]

Regardless of preserving the calcium, its still a good way to get your live prey dusted and shaking out any excess leaving your bugs with a light coating of calcium or vitamins

 

[Harley]

I don't doubt that a bit and like that part of the idea. It's just reuse that I'm not a fan of. Any way to speed up dusting is a great thing. I am only keeping one Dragon right now but I have 15 frogs that I have to dust for every day. That gets tedious.

 

[Tonja]

I can imagine it does get tedious. I dust all the crickets at one time using the parmesan cheese container, well the crickets for breakfast anyway and its so much easier and you aren't wasting baggies as the container can be washed over and over again so its like saving a teeny bit of money by not having to use baggies.

 

[Harley]

dart frogs use flightless fruit flies so I wouldn't be able to use the Parmesan cheese container idea. They are to small, any screen that would let the powder out would be big enough for flies to get out of.

 

[Tonja]

I see, I have no experience with frogs what so ever. Only experience I have is when living in texas a huge old bull frog would get in our swimming pool to have a nice swim and we would have to fish him.her out lol

 

[Doug2013]

Put calcium in a Polly bag, put critters in bag, shake, let critters walk out to feeding area, BD eats critters. Is there more to it than that?

 

[Tonja]

Doug I to used baggies for dusting but found I was wasting them and money so found this alternative to save on wasting baggies. For those that do want to preserve the excess calcium powder, its a great way to do so. I was not using the same baggie day after day, I was using it once then tossing it. I saw the parmesan cheese container idea on here somewhere long ago and have used it ever since, I just wash it well and its reusable. I just thought I would share the idea someone once shared with others on here.

 

[Doug2013]

OK. Is there a problem reusing the calcium? I never throw it away.