baby pet stick insects imminent ... temporary housing help

[MrsNotPrincessKate]

Hi everyone we've agreed to get stick insects, as a friend of DS has baby ones at first I was thinking of getting a plastic tank with a lid like what you keep crickets in but i've looked into it and my cheap plastic tank now might be cruel like the small round fish bowls of my childhood... they like mesh sided enclosures about 18 inches high, thing is expense, we had all the 'they cost practically nothing' conversations and thats true but the mesh enclosures aren't exactly coming in at the practically nothing budget, we are going to order a flat pack one (bargain one) but the sticks are coming home this week is a coffee jar with a breathable fabric top held on with elastic band too evil in the short term? Other option is buy the small plastic tank as well as the kit one...? (small scream)

What sort of stickies are they? The enclosure height needs to be 3x their length so that they can moult.

You don't need a fancy enclosure at all, DH built ours out of scrap wood. You can modify a storage box if you need to. Only the top of the enclosure needs to be mesh, as long as they've got a long enough bit of bramble or whatever so they can climb up there. I bought a bug screen off ebay for a fiver and used the fabric from that.

How big is the coffee jar?

There are loads of cool DIY enclosures here.

They do cost practically nothing, that's why I got mine Actually, I'm in the black after selling most of the eggs they laid. I had 6 macleay's spectres, just waiting for the eggs to hatch now for my next batch.

That is fantastic thank you :) I'll see if we can't make one of those. They are indian ones and only babies so just a cm long at the moment I think we are getting 5. It's a smallish coffee jar, I'll route about for something bigger and try to build one of these. Thank you Eau Rouge. :)

I've sourced some mosquito net and am trying to get hold of my Granddad (bit deaf with the phone) about some old show cages for canaries he has in his shed, changing the bars, which are only on the front to mesh shouldn't be so hard or even putting mesh over them. Otherwise theres a reptile shop not too far away which hopefully has something suitable, but home made ones do look best as the pre made ones are either too pricy or have black mesh, difficult to see the sticks through. Thanks again for the link.

Actually black mesh tends to work better, or dark grey. White is OK if you've already ordered it though.

Is black better then? :) Theres a commercially available net cage which is easily in budget and its black, we might look at that. Thank you again.

I was told that black would work better and I wasn't sure, but I went with black and I'm glad I did- you can see really clearly.

Thanks so much, DS has made a tank out of a large pound stretcher tupperware and some garden fleece now so since he is pleased with that, it'll do for a bit but we'll order the black net cage if his cage looks a bit crappy as they grow. thanks for all the help.