I'm thinking about ordering 1,000 crickets. Right now all I have are a couple of those Lee's Kricket Keepers. I know some people keep them in big rubbermaid tubs. How does that work?
at my university (where i care for all the herps) we keep crickets in a 10 gallon tank with screen lid. a rubbermaid would work the same way (except it'd be bigger and you probably wouldn't need a lid if the "walls" of the rubbermaid are more than a foot high). i also make sure to include some of the 'egg crate' stuff or crinkled up newspaper for the crickets to limb in/around. it's also easier that way - you can just pick up a small peice of 'egg crate' and shake it into a cup to get the crickets out. make sure you 'gut load' the crickets before feeding them to your animals. remember; whatever you feed the crickets is what you are feeding your pet. i always feed the crickets fluker's brand (there are other brands) powedered cricket food and gel water AND give them some fresh fruit chunks. make sure the crickets have a few hours to eat before you feed them off. i'd also powder the crickets with powdered reptile vitamins a couple times per month (depending upon what herp species you have).
A big tub would be good and if your getting adult crix put a little bowl of damp soil in with them for like a week then take it out. In 2 weeks you should have a ton of baby crix Just an easy way to save some money
Breeding Crickets I've recently been breeding my own crickets because I've expanded my collection of herps. I still buy my smaller crickets online, because I currently don't have a variety of sizes of my crickets, but I bought some adult crickets at a local bait and tackle store. I put them in a rubbermaid container with some moist peat moss on the bottom. The females promptly laid eggs and then I ended up feeding all of the adults to my pets. I kept the peat moss moist by misting it with a spray bottle. I kept them in my garage, which gets quite hot in the summer, so I misted them daily, just enough to keep the peat from drying out, but not soaking it. Within a couple of weeks I had thousands of little pinheads running around. I put a couple of carrots in the container with the pinheads, and sprinkled some fish flake food (high protein). Crickets are voracious eaters and they quickly began growing larger. I separated them out of the container into another container by placing some egg carton stuff in there with them. They quickly climb all over the inside to hide, then I simply transfer them to a different container. After that, I bought some more adult crickets and started the process all over again. I currently have about four rubbermaid containers, (not huge ones) with different sizes of crickets in each. It's important that you place egg carton stuff, paper towel or toilet paper rolls inside with the crickets. They need plenty of surface area to climb and hide in, otherwise they'll scramble around the corners of your container and end up trampling each other. You'll end up losing many of them that way. I read somewhere that if you decide to breed your own crickets, mealworms, etc. that you kinda have to treat them like pets. It can be kinda fun to watch them and rewarding when you have your own supply of feeder insects. They can really help you through in a pinch if you're waiting on a shipment of insects too. I'll post some pics if you like.
hey can u breed crix in a 2-1/2 gallon tank or would u grt to many and if u do how can u reduce the numbers?????????
I also heard that a wet sponge will work and they will lay eggs in the sponge. Anyone tried this method?
Setup Here's some pics of my cricket setup. It's very basic, but it works well. The first is a pic of the tub that I keep the peat moss in. It's a little dry. I took the pic before I misted it. The next is a pic of some of the pinheads that hide in the egg carton stuff. The one below is my pinhead tub. The last two are pics of the .5" crix I have and where I store all of them. You can also see how they hide in the egg carton stuff. If you have a good screen you can probably get away with keeping them in a small aquarium as long as you have enough surface area for them to climb on. I keep all of them in a plastic shelf storage. If I close it, it seals pretty well, so I don't get many escapes. You can see that I don't use very large bins. The adult size crickets can jump out if they try hard enough, but for some reason if you keep stuff for them to hide in, and enough food, they tend not to go anywhere. I have lids on the containers with holes drilled in them, but someone on this board mentioned cutting a large hole in the center of the lid and hot gluing some screen to the inside. I'm thinking about trying this. I live in Florida, so it gets pretty hot in my garage during the summer, so if I keep the lids on, I end up losing a bunch of crix to the heat. During the summer, I either keep the lids off, or only partially on, but this person's idea will definitely help.
I store my crickets in a 38 gallon rubbermaid containers. Place the original egg crates in the container and tear off two of the flaps off the box that your crickets came in. Place one of these flaps on the first crate on the bottom and repeat with the second crate. This keeps the crates from falling into one another andalso helps to keep the air circulating in the container. I use a papertowel tube that has been stapled on one end to retrieve the crickets as I need them. It also helps to allow you to control how many crickets you need for your feedings. I have had experiences with crickets, climbing the sidea of the containers, especially the small ones. I don't know, but the containers may not be as smooth as others and so I alter the lids. What I do with this is I cut a large portion of the lid out and replace this with screen which I hot glue to the 'frame' of the lid and then duct tape the raw edges of the screen down. I use two shallow lids, one bigger one for gutload and one smaller one for easywater. Rotate your crates every other day if you don't plan to use them all within 2 days. Make sure that you clean the container out before each new use with one part bleach and nine parts water and rinse very thoroughly, then dry thoroughly and it's ready for new crickets! P.S. Throw away the potatoes that come with the crickets! I feel that this is the perfect breeding ground for molds and bacteria, and IF it is, could be spread to our dragons and such!!!
