Do you completely clean your rat tubs?

I disinfect and hose rat tubs weekly...I never just dump bedding and refill...Nasty!

Seems like alot of you dump and refill which is probably what I am going to start doing. I will maybe get myself some clorox wipes like some of you said to wipe out if it is really bad. Thanks for the opinions guys!

I dump and then wash with dish soap every week when I change em. I think it gives me an extra day or 2 before they start stinking again. then maybe every 2 or 3 months i'll wash them and hose them down with f10.

ASFs here but I dump the bedding, spray diluted bleach, wipe down, spray water, wipe down, refill with new bedding. I prefer when the rats are odorless and the only way thats going to even remotely get close to happening is thoroughly cleaning weekly.

I dump, scrape out with dustpan, and refill. Been doing it that way for years with no problems. Why make extra work for yourself if you don't have to, is what I think about the matter.

If your rat tubs are nasty enough that you think you need to wipe them out and disinfect every week... You either:

A. Have too many rats in the bin.
B. Are using horrible/wrong/not enough bedding.
C. are doing something massively wrong with diet to affect droppings/pissing etc.

Or a) I like my animals to live in the best conditions I can give them even if they are feeders by not letting plastic that has come in contact with pee and poo just sit with residue and b) they are in my small apartment room with me and I like it to not smell like small animals

I don't personally breed rats, but once a week I help out a friend who does. Every week tubs get scrubbed with hot water and dish soap. He's had better luck rotating males than doing harems and keeps at most 3 females in a tub. We clean every Tuesday and it smells pretty ripe by then. We use plenty of bedding but in some tubs the ammonia can be a bit intense, especially if it's a tubs with 3 litters of weanlings that need to be pulled. I can't imagine just dumping the bedding and putting more in on top of all the residue that hasn't been cleaned. They may just be feeders but they deserve to live a good life in a clean home. Since there is usually 2-3 of us we've been able to work out an assembly line type system using a few extra tubs. It only takes us 1.5-2 hours to clean 60+ cages. Even doing it alone it doesn't take that much more time to give the tubs a quick scrub with soap and hot water.

I just take the bottle of chlorhex spray I use on snake tubs into the rat room. Weekly cleanouts. Dump bedding, spray and wipe with chlorhex, refill bedding...

the blood from birthing moms really needs to be disinfected. How many use white tubs? Dark tubs never look dirty, but my white tubs show how much mess is really on the sides of the tubs.


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