Restaurant Egg Crates ?

[bullfrog43]

Hello everyone,

Hamburg expo this Saturday . I plan on getting some dubia roaches and was wondering if anyone has had problems with egg crates from restaurants.

[JeffreH]

Go for it - you can often get them for free this way. I've not had an issue, but would probably recommend pitching any that are obviously soiled. I've had a few that clearly had some broken eggs in them and opted to throw them out.

You can also use drink carriers from fast food places. They aren't quite as efficient as egg flats, but they are better than most other structures like toilet paper rolls and the like.

[fish4all]

Mine are from a restaurant and the roaches seem to be doing great.

[deranged chipmunk]

they can't be any worse than the ones that come from a supermarket. in fact, i would bet good money that the restaurant is cleaner than the supermarket

[demon amphibians]

I second all the above. As long as they don't appear to be dirty they are probably cleaner then your door nob. I get my own from the super market and I never had mold or any other sort of harm to my colonies. you can also use toilet paper rolls and paper towel rolls as well. (the center card board part). Above everything they seem to prefer these. I guess they just feel safer in these. But it might take you a while to build up a good supply. I have even had my roaches eat the egg crates due to too much moisture but it did them no harm. This occurred in my breeder bin, of course i don't feed off my breeders so none were fed to my frogs. you can also make things out of card board if you really want to get involved all my dry foods are served out of small card board boxes that i made with a hot glue gun. Cheap and very accessible.

[Sandy Bear]

I work in a kitchen, and I take these home all the time. I've had no issues using them with my feeders, even the ones that do have some minor grease or egg spots on them.
I also take the empty saran wrap rolls from work. These are nice to use with bugs or feeder rodents, as it has really thick cardboard that can be chewed on (by rodents) and makes good hides as well.
I also go to the local fabric store and take some of the empty cardboard tube rolls that used to have the drapery fabric on it. I cut these down to size, they make good hides for feeders and rodents, they also act like the cricket tubes from the cricket keepers.

Lots of kitchens will have an assortment of pails from left over foods (fruit, butter, oil, sauce, etc...) some of these can be handy to use too.
Larger 5 gallon pails, if you collect a bunch of these, (6?) you can make a sorting device by drilling the bottoms of the tubs with different sized drill bits. It makes cleaning go faster and getting the sizes you need quicker too.
Left over salad dressing containers, spice containers can be used to store bug food, and water gel in.
You can cut pails down to make food and water gel bowls.
A bag of Chick egg laying mash from our local feed store fill about two 5 gallon pails up. So they are good for storage too.

Keep in mind that kitchens have to pay every time they get their dumpster emptied. It's not cheap either, so you will be doing them a favour by recycling their "trash" for them.