So I get my frozen pup rats via petco, when they arrived the bags had holes from the frozen pup rats poking through, which wasn’t noticed until I was opening the package, than one of the bags broke exploding frozen pup rats onto my floor and my bed where my five year old was playing on his iPad, which surprised me made me scream and sent my Tabby cat into some kind of wild frenzy seeing frozen rats all over, So I repackaged the frozen pup rats into glad bags and then put the glad bags into a large plastic tuberware container, Than into our freezer. I know that the frozen rats are lab grown and free from disease and parasites, but my question is, is it alright to store the frozen pup rats like this in my apartment freezer with our family’s food? I understand no food is sterile when it goes into anythings stomach and that you aren’t supposed to cross contaminate the rats with anything humans use to cook or eat off of so is this a healthy acceptable way to store my bps food along with our human food? Like say what if a frozen pizza box touched the outside of the rats tuberware container in the freezer like this? Is it thus cross contaminated? And Since I don’t have a utility sink to thaw the rats in and I read I cant use the kitchen sink should I use the bathtub or bathroom sink? I bought separate dishes and tongs for the rats as well. Any insight on this topic would be highly appreciated thank you
I’m don’t know if it’s ok…but it’s what I do lol. Only have 1 freezer so it’s right next to the frozen pizzas 
I keep my bundles of frozen rats and mice in my freezer with all my food. And they go into freezer ziplock baggies. Even if they fell on the floor, in the sink, in the freezer I wouldn’t be worried about anything close to cross contamination. You’re talking about a space that gets (or should get) well below the freezing point. Germs just generally don’t survive.
We have a travel fridge/freezer I store them in
I keep some of mine in the main freezer, but I keep them in the door of the freezer just to keep them out of the way. There is only so much room in the main freezer so I keep the others in a large chest freezer we use for deer meat storage. Storing rats/mice is just like storing any other meat, and they may even be safer than raw meat since they don’t have flesh exposed. No harm will come to the frozen pizzas, so don’t worry lol.
Frozen pizza is likely already covered in rat “filth”. You would be hard-pressed to make it worse. What you are doing sounds like “best practices” to me.
I don’t know about what other keepers do, but for my wife and I we get a microwaveable safe container, boil water, add cold water (hot water next), check temp you don’t want it too hot/cold, then let the rodent sit for 10 min to de thaw.
I am not sure about your pet smart, but when we bought frozen rodents from them the rodents seemed underweight and just not right. This led us into an adventure of breeding our own rodents though that cost us more in the end…(never have vet techs breed rodents lol we then go into enrichment/proper diet/critter nation cages xD ). That being said you can go to a local reptile store for better/fresher frozen rodents than petsmart/petCo for plumper healthier more nutritious specimens.
As for storage we just throw them in the freezer door in a zip lock back… what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger xD
I personally just take what I need out of their baggies and put them in a cup with hot water. Depending on volume of food may dump out the water and add more hot. Never had a problem with popping pinkies ect. Always have come nice and piping hot for my snakes.
As for where I get mine, I always go with Perfect Prey and suggest them to anyone. Even if they only have one pet snake. Can get small amounts or larger amounts. They always give two options for how many you wanna get on all of the smaller prey (dunno about Dumbo rats ect. Don’t have anything big enough). Lots cheaper than buying from a chain pet store and much better quality.
I breed ASF rats and get frozen from Rodent Pro I am very happy with their service and product. I keep them in my kitchen freezer with the other food and use a container in the kitchen sink to thaw.