De-bugifiying wood

[jason holland]

ok, i went for a walk today to look for woody kinda stuff i could use for my versicolour...

i managed to nab a bit of vine that looked quite the ticket, but obviously i dont wanna put it in the tank if small bugs etc might be on or in it.

now i thought the easy way would be to nuke it in the microwave, but then i could cook it in the oven for a bit...

but well... have any of you done anything like this yourself? any tips or suggestions? (even if the suggestions are to not do it etc)

ta

[James Box]

i suppose the only thing is making sure it doesn't scorch or catch fire in the microwave...
i think another thing you could try is putting it in the freezer overnight...

[Tom Forman]

microwave, oven both good.

Freezer should do the trick too.

[jason holland]

cool cheers guys, i might nuke it for a minuit, then freeze it over night just to make sure

[Ray Hale]

I would give it a good scrub first to remove any possible insecticide and then nuke it. Always worked for me.

[jason holland]

yeah will do, sounds best ta

[Colin D Wilson]

Boiling salt water in the bath, good scrub then in the oven or nuke it
Never had any problems!

[Peter Lacey]

I remember about 25 years ago I wanted to include wood in my aquarium for my baby piranha. It was freezing outside so I reconed pouring boiling water over it, leaving it to freeze again and repeat numerous times.
It didn't seem to work. Bugs exited the submerged wood months later although I was lucky enough to see these little blighters get their come-uppence under the jaws of the Piranha. Its worth noting this submerged wood was taken from an icy cold pond.
These days I tend to use either the microwave or oven. 10 mins with a bowl of water seems to do the trick. I try to take any loose bits of bark off and anything that resembles mould. The oven dries the wood out and therefore helps reduce fungal growth but so far I haven't tried this in a moist environment.
I've used bamboo for my A. metallica where the substrate was half flooded. Subsequently mould grew in this and other very moist enclosures but I've addressed the water content. As Peter Roach has experienced, the high water content will cause mould but this doesnt seem to cause an issue for the T.
Sometimes I wonder why we endeavour to create a such a clean environment when in nature its probably far from that.

[Tom Forman]

I'm going to get into praying mantis soon and interestingly everyone on the Tarantula forums say:

Fruit flies are nutritionally deficient, do not use them.

Everyone on the Praying mantis Forum say:

Crickets are nutritionally bad for mantis, do not use them, use fruit flies exclusively.

The ones inbetween say:

Crickets are fine, fruit flies are fine however crickets that have been fed carrot before feeding will make mantis throw up and get sick.

And, unexplained mantis deaths are down to the crickets either beein store bought and thus have not been fed healthily or their enclosures were kept in unhygenic conditions.

We will see how my mantis breeding goes. I am fairly sure people have had difficulties with fruit flies and crickets in the past mostly because of a bad diet they were feeding these insects.

I do not bother to clean my crickets very often (oh yeah in case the odd one is wondering, I still have got a few hundred crickets left ...)
but my crickets are as healthy as can be.

People say the odd death in cricket breeding is normal. Well I am saying , no it aint. I haven't had a single death this year yet and a death is an indication that something is wrong which means the food you are feeding will have something wrong with it.

The main cricket diet should be dog food biscuits, wheetabix and oats.

Simple as that. They should have a constant access to this and it should be kept mould free(make sure your dog food is of good quality, without containing colourings)

On a weekly basis I feed some lettuce to give them some vitamins. Fruit is not really needed but I occasionally give them some too.

So yeah alot of theories floating about.

Are fruitflies nutritionally deficient or is this just a rumour?

Is carrot bad to use as gutloader? Some seem to think so

Will a dirty cage encourage crickets to die and pass on bacteria to your pet? Well I never let mould build up too much but I let the cricket poo pile up to about 1cm before I clean it out and have had absolutely no problems so far.



I was going to switch to buying crickets again as it actually works out cheaper to just buy crickets than to breed em yourself and is certainly less hassle however store bought crickets end up dying straight away and I am not happy at how unhealthy they are.

[Peter Lacey]

LOL Tom, how does that answer the original question?
Have you posted in the wrong thread?

[Tom Forman]

true I veered off topic quite a bit.

It was your comment about dirty cricket enclosures that inspired that post lol.

I just wanted to point out that some people have attributed their mantis dying to dirty cricket enclosures before. But I do not really believe in that so it turned into quite a long post.

As you can tell I have been researcing mantis quite a bit now, they are arriving tomorrow hopefully.

[jason holland]

lol ok.... well ta for all the comments... so far ive kinda ended up just buying some wood i found today, as it was perfect for what i needed, im still gonna sort the other wood ive got out tho, cos i can use that in other enclosures.....
but for now...

heres my A. versicolor's home

[Tom Forman]

looks great. And your avic should like that jungle too

[Nicola Dolby]

Hi there,
first can I say the microwave sounds good. With the oven there is the danger that by the time you've got the bugs there'll be nothing left but cinders. Then again who am I to talk, I just buy cork bark and the only things I've found living on that were some S. grossas!
As for the mantis problem, why not start a cockroach colony and feed them those?

[James Box]

i suppose this is sort of on topic, but does anyone know ways to ensure leaf litter doesn't have any chemicals? obviously hard to wash it lol
i have collected some, and was assured there weren't chemicals, but i worry that perhaps it came in contact with compost that had chemicals in.