The Roach and Cricket Colony

Every lizard, frog, and insect-eating bird in your house runs on bugs, and the pet store charges accordingly, when it isn't sold out or selling you parasites. This course makes you the supplier. You'll learn why dubia roaches are the quiet, non-climbing, non-infesting king of feeders and when banded crickets, soldier fly larvae, or mealworms fit better, how to build a bin from an opaque tub with stainless mesh in the lid and a Fluon or petroleum-jelly barrier on the rim, why 80 to 95°F from an external heat mat on a thermostat makes everything breed faster, how a damp coir laying box works and why it leaves the cricket bin every five to seven days, how to blend a dry chow of oats, grains, alfalfa, spirulina, and bee pollen and which foods poison a colony, why an open water bowl drowns insects and what gel crystals and wet paper towels do instead, how vertical egg flats turn one bin into a high-rise, how to sex a dubia and keep one male to every three to five females, how pinhead crickets hatch and what they eat, how stacked mesh screens sort adults from babies in seconds, why feeders get a 24-hour vitamin gut-load before they're dinner, how to prevent grain mites and phorid flies without a single spray, why clean dry bins don't smell, what chore day looks like, how the weekly four-point colony check catches a crash, why you wear an N95 and gloves around roach dust, how to rescue an overheated, flooded, or starving bin, and why a bug diary means you never run out.