Breeding Crickets: A comprehensive guide

Yamori

Aussie Reptile Keeper
Messages
626
Location
Australia
Breeding Crickets for your geckos or any other reptile for that matter is a great way to save yourself time and money when you have hungry little or sometimes BIG mouths to feed depending on what you keep/breed.

Being able to produce a variety of sizes of cricket will allow you to offer the appropriately sized prey to your reptiles. If done properly it is clean, dose not smell and is funnily enough, quite rewarding.


My way is simple, cheap and it works.

key factors for successfully breeding crickets:

1. Heat.

2. Food and water.

3. A suitable place to lay the eggs.


Getting started:

First things first, you need a large tub with a tight fitting lid.

you can buy these in the most supermarkets in the laundry/cleaning isle. I don't know if you can get tupaware tubs big enough so i bought and use a clear plastic laundry tub.

Cut a large rectangle on one side of the lid and cut and secure an appropriate sized piece of fly netting or mesh. I initially used a soldering iron to melt the fly netting to the plastic witch would have worked if not for my soldering iron refusing to work and ending up in the trash so i used duct tape on both sides of the lid (yes this will hold, I have never had a single escapee or intruder)

For food i have a shallow square dish, you can use a jar lid etc and for food, a mix of gutload, natural dog biscuits and commercial crickets pellets as i feel its good to give them a balanced and variable diet.

For water i use a small jar lid filled with water crystals as it dose not make a mess and prevents drowning witch crickets are prone to. Why? i don't know, you could have the shallowest dish with a rock in it so they could get out if they fell in and they would still drown every time.

For hides i use the small 6 egg cartons (mainly because the crickets i bought and breed came in a number of small tubs with these inside), you will only need 2-4 of these. The crickets will gather on both sides so don't worry about space. However you can just as easily use 2 regular 12 egg cartons, just depends on what you have.

Now the egg laying chamber. Grab yourself a small tupaware container, cut a small hole in one end, put a decent amount eco earth/ coca fiber in it and moisten it, Put the lid on it and your done.

Just make sure to give it a quick misting every couple of days to prevent substrate from drying out. For heat witch is very important, use a UTH ,heat wire or tape placed under the tub.


Tips and tricks:

1. larger crickets can climb but not very well, make sure dishes or lids used for food and water are shallow, if you cant find shallow ones simply get a small piece of wood, paddle pop stick ( lollipop stick you can buy in arts ans crafts stores), or a appropriate sized bit of dowel rod etc and attach it to the lip of the dish/lid with masking or celetape acting as a ramp

2. Baby crickets being light and agile are very good climbers and will attempt to climb up and out of your tub often with great success. To stop this apply a line of celetape around the inside of your tub, the crickets will climb up to that line and simply fall off.

3. I actually use a sand/eco earth mix in the egg laying chamber as apposed to eco earth by itself as crickets do like to dig sometimes as much an an inch down before laying eggs. its entirely up to you but i find this works well.

Hope you found this basic guide helpful. Pm me with any questions.

- Darren
 
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Tony C

Wayward Frogger
Messages
3,899
Location
Columbia, SC
Two questions:

1. How do you keep the smell down? My crickets always start to stink after a few days.

2. How do you separate the crickets from the frass? I buy several sizes of crickets, and the smaller ones grow and molt so quickly that the bin gets a fairly thick layer of shed exoskeletons, and I usually wind up throwing out a fair number of crickets because I don't have the patience to hand pick them out.
 

Yamori

Aussie Reptile Keeper
Messages
626
Location
Australia
I don't think i mentioned cleaning in my guide. The simpler the set up the easer it is to clean.

As for ways to keep the smell down - keep food and water crystals in dishes/lids, you would think it fairly obvious but some people just throw the food on the surface of the tub or in the egg cartons where moisture builds up and food go's off fairly quickly.

Replace food regularly, it doesn't last forever and like all foods will go bad and stinks the place out.

If kept simple and tidy you wont have to do a proper clean up more than once every couple of months. When you do a proper clean out get an extra large black dust bin liner,

shake crickets out of their egg cartons and put the cartons aside. Remove food, water dish and egg laying chamber from the tub.

open the black bag and put one end of the tub in it, tilt and shake the tub to get all the crickets in the bag. Make sure their all in the bag and secure it before putting it aside.

Give the tub a good scrub with hot water and lemon juice witch acts as a disinfectants and deodorizer, rinse well, dry it off and start putting everything back in leaving crickets till last.

I tip the bag upside down making all the crickets fill the mouth of the bag and hold it with the secured end actually inside the tub, untie or unclip if you use bag clips and release. you shouldn't have a single cricket jump out. Its pretty simple mate.


Most of the frass will be in the egg cartons. I usually remove all the crickets from the cartons(normally a couple of good taps will get them out) and empty waste in to a rubbish bag. Any waste on the surface of the tub, well, you'll have to remove all crickets to get rid of it. The same goes for exoskeletons, i usually only find them in the egg cartons so its pretty easy to remove the crickets and empty frass and any exos straight in to the trash.
 
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Tony C

Wayward Frogger
Messages
3,899
Location
Columbia, SC
I don't use any substrate, keep food and water crystals in dishes, and replace the food often, but they still smell awful. Maybe I just have a sensitive nose.
 

Yamori

Aussie Reptile Keeper
Messages
626
Location
Australia
Sorry mate, i don't have answer for that one. My breeder box is a hive of activity and i just don't smell it. Perhaps a different species of cricket? i don't know.

Is it the crickets themselves or the tub that stinks?
 

Tony C

Wayward Frogger
Messages
3,899
Location
Columbia, SC
Could be a different species, here in the US Acheta domestica is the common species, do you use them or an Australian species? I'm not sure what the source of the smell is, but I'm getting pretty tired of it. I have a couple thousand lateralis roaches coming tomorrow, I'm really hoping my frogs like them so I can cut back on crickets.
 

Lutrani

New Member
Messages
5
My crickets also stink, and I've been constantly trying to find something to absorb the smell (with no luck so far), so you're not alone!
 

JM_Daniels

New Member
Messages
29
Location
U.S.
For water i use a small jar lid filled with water crystals as it dose not make a mess and prevents drowning witch crickets are prone to. Why? i don't know, you could have the shallowest dish with a rock in it so they could get out if they fell in and they would still drown every time.

- Darren

The reason they drown so easily is because crickets breathe through small spiracles (openings) that are located all around the sides of their body. If the sides of their body get submerged with water, it is comparable to if our own air pipes getting filled with water. The difference is that they need to get their entire body out of the water, whereas we only need our nose or mouth out to prevent drowning.

That said, a sponge or wet piece of cotton works well for the water. Even fresh fruit can be substituted because they'll just obtain their moisture from that.
 
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