A few questions for woodie breeders

[jacevy]

I have a colony of woodies that I have just started. Yay for cheap lizard food.

I do have a few questions about how people do certain things though and I would be much appreciative if somebody could help me out.

1) How do pople actually get the woodies out? I have a layer of fluon around the lip so am hesitant to trap and drag a woodie up through this. I have tried tweezers but I must be a gumby because I can't catch any!

2) My colony stinks! Is this because I am putting too much moisture food in? I chuck a carrot and some bok choy in every day. Is this too much? Should I put dog kibble in and only a small piece of carrot?

3) Can I use plastic containers instead of cardboard boxes? I am finding that the boxes are the things that stink

4) Do you have a designated vaccum for cleaning? I used a vacuum once and it stunk the whole vacuum out. But I don't see how else I can clean the container without using a vacuum. I did try to transfer the colony to another container but that was long and painful!

 

[saximus]

1 – It can help if you have cardboard tubes like old toilet paper rolls then you can pick up one of them and there will usually be a few inside it. You might also need to man up and learn to grab them with your hands. You’ll get used to it pretty quickly

2 – Roaches smell, that’s kinda what they do. For the most part you will probably have to get used to it. Moving it to a less utilised, more ventilated area might help too. One other trick that I used was to put a layer of soil in the bottom and put mealworms to live in that. Then you end up with a bit of a bio-dome situation where the mealworms eat the dead woodies and also reduce the smell. That will also help with question 4 because you rarely if ever need to clean it out.

3 – I don’t see why not but I found that it’s the dead roaches and poop that accumulates that causes the smell and not so much the cardboard.

 

[Flaviruthless]

Second the cardboard tubes, they make it easy to get them out. I have my colony in a 180L plastic container lined with fluon (about 15cm around the top). I have lucerne chaff in the bottom of my colony. I keep it in the reptile room and I can't smell it at all. For me, the chaff has worked really well to completely stop the smell.

 

[Rogue5861]

When i heated my colony it used to smell a lot less then it does unheated, moisture builds up and they can start to smell a little more then normal. I have a colony of close to 4000 and they can just keep eating. I feed them carrots, pumpkin, potato, lettuce and rabbit pellets. They would probably do a little better with dog food but i dont have a dog, so dont really see it being cost effective.


Rick

 

[Sel]

Use a plastic container to keep them in. Put egg cartons in (ripped in half).. when u need to get some out just grab out an egg carton.

 

[ronhalling]

If you want to get some of the smaller 1s whilst your rep is still small try a trick i seen a couple of months ago, Go down to the cheap shop and buy a packet of drinking straws, bunch some of them together to about the size of a 50c peice and bind them together with 4 elastic bands then between the second and third bands cut the whole lot in half giving you 2 bunches then just plonk the whole thing into the colony, only the small 1s that you need right now will make themselves at home in the staws so just pick out 1 of the bunches and tap into a container to feed your reps........simple. ............................................Ron

 

[Ash1990]

I have a couple of woodie colonies, I usually ignore them most of the time, chuck in food every now and again and they do their thing. I put a layer of kitty litter (the paper pellet ones) on the bottom first. Then put egg cartons in rows and on top of each other to the vaseline line. I chuck in a carrot once a week and usually put in bulk dog biscuits at the same time. My tubs are so heavily populated that i tend to just open the lid and grab a couple running around the top of the egg carton pile. Otherwise i pull out an egg carton and usually there are heaps hiding inside. Mine don't smell much, besides a faint roachy smell, but not badly. I have mine in a large plastic tub with a mesh roof, and they do really well. I tend to replace the egg cartons one at a time over a week or so, makes it so much easier than trying to do a whole colony transfer, which is painful when there are millions of babies everywhere. Hope that helped a little

 

[briansworms]

I have 13 woodie tubs and l keep them very clean. I use egg trays rather than cartons. The trays are vertical so poo falls down rather than collect in the living area. Feed them your veggie scraps rather than buy food for them. Potato peels etc. For dry food dog or cat buiscuts. A small amount put through a blender goes a long way when mixed with chick starter crumbs and cornmeal. I also add some dolomite and gold fish flakes. Feed time is like doing a U.N. food drop with them massing over the feed tubs.

I have no substate on the bottom. Each week l shake the trays a little to dislodge any poo. I then hold the trays in place and bang one end of the tub to get all the poo to one end. I then give them 10 minutes to run back and then simply vacumn up the poo. I always do this before screening babies from the breeders as it makes it much easier. One or two colonies it would only take a few minutes each week. The smell would depend on numbers and how clean you keep them.

As mentioned ventilation is essential.

 

[Cypher69]

I don't breed woodies but keep bulk crickets in a decent size plastic container with numerous holes drilled for ventilation.

I don't mean to hijack this thread but my main problem is always finding maggots in the substrate & sponge in the water dish.

The vent holes are too small imo for flies to get in so I'm forever wondering where the maggots come from???