Bio Balls for Watering Feeder Insects

[kelly mcdougall]

I waited two weeks before posting to be sure , and I am so , here goes . . I found a couple boxes of plastic bio balls in storage at work and thought I would try them with our crickets to economize and streamline maintenance and Im happy to share that they work great! I use them in the water dishes which are plastic flower pot saucers - the 'tooth' of which makes for easy crawling surface , and lined the bottom with the standard size blue bio balls . They are extremely easy to rinse and surprisingly even the 2 weekers arent drowning - I pack them in pretty dense for the smaller crickets but for the adults a small handful does the trick . No more water gels or spoiling romaine! Because of how well they worked for crickets I tried them with my dubia at home using the smaller size and a shallower type water dish as the dubia are much less agile . I used my glue gun to fix the balls to the bottom of the dish so that its a single piece water resource , easy to rinse and fill . I do find a couple freshie neonate dubia drowned but so few its almost not worth mention . One thing that is worth mentioning is that the insects really seem to enjoy using it - like Enrichment for crickets - so now they have clean water and a variety of nourishing , easily managed dry foodstuffs with produce being supplemental perk instead of a hydration Must . Happy food is Good Food!