How to take care of crickets.

[Gtwo305]

I recently made my own homemade cricket keeper with mesh lid and everything. It is my second one already. However, im having trouble figuring out how to make those water crystals they sell at pet stores.

Should i just soak cotton balls in water and throw them in? Or are the crystals better.

What about for food? Can i feed my crickets oatmeal? Carrots? Im looking to keep the smell to a minimum so i dont want any foods that may go bad.


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[Akari_32]

There's really no way around the smell with crickets, but I offer veggies whenever I get crickets. So far they've liked anything I've thrown at them- squashes, zucchini, lettuces and greens, carrots, potatoes. I don't give water because I know how stupid they are. They get their moisture from their food.

 

[tb144050]

I use wads of wet toilet paper in a very shallow rubbermaid lid. I also put in random vegetable slices or lettuce. For daily food, I keep crushed-to-almost-dust dogfood mixed with flukers hi-calcium cricket food. I only use the flukers because I am still new and want to make sure that I am gutloading the crickets well enough.

Are you "breeding crickets"? you mentioned that you have 2 cricket keepers already. Put a heatlamp on each and start rotating a dish of soil every 10 days or so, and you will have a cricket factory??

(I am trying my first round right now....waiting to see if the eggs hatch)

 

[Gtwo305]

No breeding of cricks here, just mealworms. My other cricket keeper is in my mothers home. Im going to try the towel paper trick and see how it goes, i had 10 dead today after i cleaned 5 dead yesterday.


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[tb144050]

So far, my highest death rate was probably due to:

Too many crickets
Too small space
Not enough heat

In a medium cricket keeper from P_____t, I put in 75 Large crickets with plenty of cricket feed and gel-water, but I lost 20 the first day, and lost 15 the second day, about 10-15 on the third day. (I took some for feeding suring these days also.)

I put the remaining 25-30 in a 10gal aquarium with a 40watt heatlight and alot more egg-crate/cardboard. They huddled to the warmest spot right under the heatlight. This crowding made them go "cannibalistic" again, and I found about 5 dead the next day.

I put in another 75 Large from P______t that afternoon (totalling about 80 Large now plus a few random tiny crickets??). I put a 100 watt bulb over the cardboard eggcrate, and now they wander, eat, breed, etc etc...

So I mentioned earlier...to keep them alive longer: don't crowd them, give food/water/heat, and they will be happy. Be sure to "gutload" them because they are your Leo's nutrition. I keep flukers mixed with crushed dogfood, and I also give random veggies daily (nutrition and water source).

To me, even if I wasn't breeding them, it's worth the cost of a large plastic storage tub so you can keep them alive (save money) and I catch them with a fishnet from an empty corner (lots of space in a large tub).

 

[tb144050]

Oh yeah...be sure your mesh lid is steelmesh...they easily jump to, grab onto, and then chew through non-steel meshes. I made that mistake. :0 soooo many got out!!! lol

 

[Tongue Flicker]

Keep your cricket enclosure floor dry at all times or it'll add up to more foul smells. I noticed keeping them on a thin layer of coco fiber bedding helps in reducing the odor