Water Crystals being reused??

[INCA]

i was wondering after my dubias suck all the water out of my crystals, can i put water in them and just reuese them?

 

[Theroachguy]

No the crystal will evaporate or will be consumed its not like a sponge

 

[INCA]

oh.. that stinks.. lol

 

[patrickb]

Well, sorta what Jason said, except that if the water evaporates (as opposed to them eating all of the crystal up) there will still be a crystal left, which can be rehydrated. When you have a smaller colony, evaporation will usually happen first and you will see the dried up crystals (they look the same as before hydration, just might be off colored thanks to a bit of poo). Add water to them and they will rehydrate. You can do this until the crystal itself is consumed. This all leads to keeping the water crystals in a dish and adding water to that dish every few days to keep those crystals hydrated and getting maximum use of them before they are consumed and you need to replace them.

Once you get a large enough colony, they will eat the water crystals up like candy and evaporation will be the last thing on your mind.

 

[NegativeCreep]

I don't like the idea of rehydrating discolored crystals, though. (I keep crix, not dubias yet) But, if the crystals are discolored due to poo and you rehydrate them, then your feeders are potentially consuming their own waste. In my case, with crickets, I want to do everything I can to keep them clean, but I don't think that will change when I switch to dubia. If you find that you are throwing too many out, just use less water crystals. I change mine every other day, and the day that I don't change them, I stir them up so the wetter/cleaner crystals are exposed.

For me, its more of a matter of cleanliness than economics.
Besides, I hear you can get them at the craft store. Next time I go, I'm going to check into this.

 

[patrickb]

Yeah, I absolutely feel ya on reusing them. I don't rehydrate any that are completed depleted, but I do keep the ones I have in the colonies hydrated and they do eventually discolor. Much less so with roaches than crickets. The crystals will be brown after the first day with crickets, might take a week for that to happen with a good sized roach colony. The cleanliness is a big concern no doubt and I change out my dishes every couple of weeks usually, but the crystals have an interesting effect to them. My biggest concern was bacterial growth, but crystals actually prevent this to a large degree by soaking up the excess moisture and actually killing the bacteria off due to the "competition" for moisture, or so that is how I understand it. That part may be wrong, but I have yet to have any problems from using them in this manner.
Just my two cents worth.