Here is my take on your questions:
1. How big of a harem can I fit in a 10 gallon?
1:4 or 1:5
2. What is the ratio of water/vanilla? I was going to use regular bottles so I don't worry about the fungus.
I beleive its one teaspoon to a gallon. Personally, I tried this, didn't notice much difference in the odour so stopped. To kill the smell in the room I keep my mice, I bought Wizards Pet Odour control air freshioner. It smells a bit like cinnamon. Some people just boil cinnamon sticks and leave dishes of the water in the room with their mice, to kill the odour. A open dish of vineger works too, if you don't have anything in the room that would spill it. Change it once a week or sooner, as vinegar evaporates and leaves a nasty smelling residue after.
3. How much do pet stores usually buy frozen mice/pet mice for?
haven't sold any mice/rats to petstores yet so can't say here. I do know my local petstore sells frozen pinkies $1 a piece.
4. What kind of containers can I use for housing that they won't be able to chew out of? And please provide what harem I can put in there.
I use various sterlite or rubbermaid containers. Other than having a mouse that figured out it could jump 12" straight up and escape, never had any chew through it.
5. How big should the hide boxes be?
I use half of a coffee cup holder you get at any coffee shop. ALso, toilette paper rolls. I add some shredded paper for them to make nests out of.
6. I appear to have lost the link the the mouse sexing page, if anyone could provide it I would be most appreicative.
I don't remember the link myself, but easest way to sex mice is checking the distance between anus and urethra (that little nub thing all mice have). ALso, at the fuzzy state, you can see the nipples on females easily. Once 4 weeks old, the male testicles drop down and are easy to see, just keep in mind, they can pull their testicles back into their bodies if nervous (typically when being picked up by the tail so you can check LOL). Look for bigger space to determine your males (typically about a quarter inch for 4 week or older males).
7. Who provides good quality racks for mice?
other than those already mentioned, can't help you here, sorry.
8. What cross breeds look nice? I am doing this primarily to make some side cash, give to herp friends (or maybe give to my leos in the future), and ferret treats when I get one.. but might as well make some interesting looking mice as well.
The solids with white or cream underbellies are quite nice looking, They call these fox or fawn I think. I like the solid colours more than broken but that is my personal taste.
9. What substrate works good? Aspen?
Aspen is very good for small animals like mice but can be expensive. CareFresh and other paper products are good too. I use pine shavings in well ventilated containers over a layer of newspaper and newspaper shavings. Its just more cost effective for me to do this and since they are feeders, giving them a long life just isn't necessary.
10. Someone said they wired the bottles inside the cage to prevent escapes, how can I do this?
I wrap wire around my water bottles, pretty much just by cutting about a foot or more of wire (doesn't have to be really thick or stiff, just strong enough to hold the weight of a full bottle of water. THe wires used for stems on artificial flowers is good). I fold it losely in half (so there is no crease at the halfway point, just enough bend to tell where the half way point is), I wrap the ends around the bottle, twist it tight against the bottle, then wrap it again, twist and use the excess as hocks to hang the bottle from the edge of the container, trimming as needed. Adjust the position of the bottle so the spout is facing the right direction and is the right height. If you wrapped tight enough the bottle will be held securely, but don't tie it so tight that it dipples the bottle or you can move the bottle up or down to adjust it.
11. Food, what do you reccomend? I hear some dog food is great but I never found a brand, one would be appreciated.
I use a mix of seeds, nutriblocks and dye/perserative lacking dogfood. Budgee seed mix or wild birdseed mix is good for the seed part, add about a cup of nutriblocks and dogfood to 4 or 5 cups of birdseed. If you buy the budgee seed mix, pick up a bag of raw sunflower seeds and crushed corn and add about half a cup of each to the budgee seeds. The wild birdseed mix already has this so you don't extra sunflower seeds.
If I could get the pre-prepared rodent chow, I would use just that but I can't get it up here in Canada easily.
12. Last but not least, where can I buy mice? 90% of the pet stores near me either don't carry them, or are Petco and Petsmart and I hear they don't sell them as feeders (and I think they would know what I am doing with them when I ask for 3 females and one male) but I guess this technically isn't using them as feeders.
I would just ask for your group of mice and if htey ask if you plan on feeding them off to your reptiles, say no. Afterall, you don' want to feed off your breeding group anyway. However, I would make sure you get young mice, (newly weaned is best, though you may have to wait a few more weeks before breeding the females, just to ensure they are grown enough. Petstores tend to sell their babies at as young an age as possible, about 3 weeks, which is a bit too young to separate them from their mothers. 4 weeks old is better. I would get the male from another store, just to lessen the chance he is related to the females. Why inbreed when you don't necessarily have to.
