How do you guys keep your crickets?

[Olimpia]

I've been keeping mine in a tall trash can outside in the shade, and they've been doing ok, but I was just curious to see what other people are doing to keep hundreds of crickets.

I'm particularly curious to see what people are doing to collect the crickets, since I'm one of those people that love my reptiles, but hate the bugs. I can't stand to grab them in handfuls so I usually have to use enmpty paper rolls to dump them into a tupperware thing and then I distribute them to my pets.

Anyone have any more efficient ideas?

 

[Daidra]

I keep 3,000 crickets per 10-gallon aquarium and 6,000 total but I will be moving up to a professional style cricket keeper like you see at some petstores

 

[Olimpia]

How do you keep it clean? I've always found it impossible to clean out the bottom of the can without having escapees and/or ending up scooping alive crickets also.

 

[Daidra]

I keep some paper towels on the bottom of the cage in then I just take the paper towel out when its dirty and replace with new paper towels and it stays clean,some may escape but not alot,Good Luck

 

[ARiES]

yea daidra is right..a nice 10 gallon tank would do fine (if you keep that many crickets) i also use papertowel on the bottom as a substrate and keep egg cartens in them so they can hide and when feeding time comes i just shake them off into my leo's enclosure. but cleaning crickets i think is a pain in the ass..but they do sell these cricket vacumes that pick the cricket up one bye one, mabey u could buy that to keep the number of dead ones laying around down to a minimum.

 

[Olimpia]

That sounds interesting, where could I find one of those vacuum things?

 

[ARiES]

i seen a video on youtube with a kid that had it its green a grey..and has like a clear holding area for the crickets i could look into for ya if ya'd like..

 

[acpart]

Here's how I keep mine (1000-2000):

10 gallon tank with screen cover
about 1/2" of gutload at the bottom of the tank
2 big pieces of egg crate (I just drop in what they come with in the package)
4 large lids of cricket gel
2 toilet paper rolls.

When I'm ready to get some crickets, I shake the egg crate. They hop off and run into the toilet paper rolls and I pick up the rolls and drop the crickets into the cricket keeper (12"x8" or so faunarium), usually losing some crickets to the kitchen floor, unfortunately. I usually get 50-100 crickets at a time into the faunarium. I go through crickets so fast (2000 lasts me about 4 weeks) that I don't have many deaths. If for some reason a bunch die and start to smell, I sift the gutload back into the tank and throw away the dead ones. Once I've run out of crickets, I throw the gutload away since it's stinky with cricket poo.

Aliza

 

[Olimpia]

I used your examples and now keep 2000 in a left over 10 gallon tank I'm not using at the moment. What I've done, and it's worked wonders for me, honestly, was to use cups with lids and cut a hole entrance on the lid and put it on its side in the tank. The crickets go in and most are too slow to leave it again, so I just turn the cup upright and I trap a few dozen in there. That's usually enough to feed one of my 2 tanks without having to touch any of them lol.

But thanks to everyone's imput, I'm finding I like this set-up much more than the one I had before.

 

[Redleg]

I have my crickets in a plastic tub with the lid cut out and hot glued screen material on it for proper ventilation and prevent from jumping/escaping crickets. Large flat bowl for gut load/feed and another smaller one with gel for water. Works great and so far no significant or any deaths.

I have two exact same tubs so that I can empty crickets in one while the other is being cleaned. I have this set up for two separate size crickets.

Key thing is food and water source that crickets will NOT drown otherwise you will have some nasty smell and quick die offs.