How to house icky bugs
- Making a spiffy Container
If you plan on keeping bugs in a small container rather than housing them in a tank, heres a great way to make a "ick" free home for your bugs. Sometimes, you can find a similar container all ready to go in the pet stores, but they are easy to make for yourself. Note: My frogs eat small crickets, so this works great on smaller to medium sized. If you (or your pet*) have larger sized bug needs you can probably use the same techniques, but make the container bigger also.
*that's a joke, silly!
- Take a large sized yogurt container. (I recommend one with at least a 2 and a half inch base.) I've tried this with cheap tupperware but I think the plastic may have some kind of chemicals in it because the crickets kept on dying in there, so you should probably stick to a regular non-thick plastic food container)
- Poke a whole bunch of holes all over the sides of it. Use a thumbtack, so the holes are big enough for air flow but not big enough for the cricket to eat their way out. (yes, I did say eat their way out, these containers have to be replaced once every few months, my last one lasted about 4 months so this isn't a very common occurance, and these containers get kinda gross after a while, so you'll probably want to replace them anyway.)
- Cut a hole large enough to let out a few bugs in the lid of the container. Best bet, cut the hole near the side of the container. Then, just like a grated parmesan cheese dispenser, you will be able to shake the nasty bugs out as a nice lunchtime treat for your froggies. Mmmm, yum!!
- Get a cork: try a rubber stopper or some sort of cork shaped item that you can wedge into the top as a makeshift door, making sure the cork will be able to close this door up such that even a really strong cricket couldn't get out. On the containers that you can sometimes buy, (they run about 1.75$, it's too bad they aren't always as easy to find!) there's a neat top that has a spout. If you are lucky to have such an item handy, you can duplicate this with a second lid that fits over the first lid, so that you simply remove the second lid, leaving the first lid with the "escape hatch" in place on the container.
- Finally, an added but not absolutely necessary touch: get a piece of sponge, like a long thin edge of sponge, and clean it really, really well so there aren't any chemicals left in it. (even new sponges tend to have a few cleaning agents in them, so just soak them and squish out water as much as you can...) Then, using simple needle and thread, sew the sponge vertically to the side of your new bug container on the inside by threading it to some of the air holes you made earlier on one side. Now, when you go to shake out bugs, you won't get the sponge falling all over the place either squishing and killing the bugs or blocking the escape hatch. Also, since you should have lots of holes even under where the sponge is, you can occasionally tip it under a faucet and drip some water onto the side of your container and rewet the sponge without risking any bugs getting loose. Pretty neat, eh?
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