DIY Bug Keeper

If you have a reptile or something that eats bugs or worms and you buy them in bulk, sometimes you have to get creative. If you are only buying a few dozen a week and feeding them all at once, but if you are buying more, or in my case a few thousand every few weeks you need someplace to put all those crickets, worms, and in our case now roaches.

I sell crickets and worms to local people and can normally out beat our local big box pet store. The only other pet store in town doesnt care bugs! They sell mostly fresh and salt water fish.

Since we have lots of mouths to feed going to the "other" place was not a option if we wanted to afford to feed and keep our animals healthy. So I began ordering bugs off line for our house a thousand at a time. After awhile someone said I should post some in online garage sale sites. And now I am building my customer base.

Back to building a bug keeper. If you are keeping a few the little kritter keepers will work good. If you are ordering by the thousands or want to start breeding your own you need something bigger.

Since I plan on breeding dubia roaches, and my own meal worms and super worms I need bigger containers. Glass aquariums are ok on a small scale, but get expensive for the tank and screened lid. Also some bugs can crawl up the sides of the silicone in the corner of the tanks.

First I went to lowes and got a cheap roll of window screen, we already have a ton of totes from when we moved. Since this one is for crickets and they need lots of air I needed a large space for screen. I took a ruler and measured where I wanted to cut. I used a box cutter and while my cut lines arn't perfect it worked. Then since it seems the glue gun got legs I used ducktape to hold it down, after cutting a piece of screen to size.

Got it all cut, taped up, then I took sand paper and roughed up the sides so it gives the crickets more room to stand, making it less cramped for it and beable to store more bugs in one tote. Then I piled egg crates on one side and will have room for their water gel and cricket food on other side. Whole thing took me less than 10 minutes to make. I do plan on using the glue gun for the next one.