Is it really so easy to breed/cultivate crickets?

[tb144050]

I actually setup the pictured colony (above) on Jan 31, 2014.

I just moved all the crickets to another identical colony setup, leaving just the "egged" peatmoss in the original bin. Sprayed the "egged" bin with water one last time, took the heatlamp off to prevent drying out (even though it will lengthen incubation time), and put a solid lid on it.

I'll check the "egged" bin in a couple of weeks...

So:

Peat moss used in colony for 10 days (from Jan 31 to about Feb 10)...
Removed colony and heat...sprayed daily with water.
10 days after removing colony (20 days since first eggs may have been laid)....

No pinheads yet...just anxiously awaiting the next week or so to see what happens... :O

 

[tb144050]

Ok, so I haven't updated this in a few weeks....I am happy to provide an update: SUCCESS!!

This is my combination of features that finally provided pinheads:

-Rubbermaid tub, packing tape lining the inside at 6" high and 9" high (to stop climbing crickets)
-40watt heatlamp clamped over (they are more active at 80F instead of 70F roomtemp)
-1x 10gallon UTH under the Rubbermaid (because my floortemp was keeping the soil at 68F...too cold. Now soiltemp is 78-84.
-ZooMed auto-mister; 15second spray every 3 hours, aimed at "coolside" because the heatlamp dries out that side of the tub too fast to even try to keep it moist.
-Feed crickets Kale and carrots ($4/week)
-Finally, I moved adult crickets to the other tub (again) a few days after installing this new setup with the auto-Mister and UTH.
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Now I finally have:
proper air temp
proper soil temp for egg incubation
proper moisture level (on the side without a heatlamp) maintained.
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Now I have more pinheads than I can count or even see!!

For anyone who is reading this and wants to know why they are call "pinheads", I have provided 1 original picture, and also a zooooomed photo for scale-reference.

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[tb144050]

Some have tripled in size since they were first seen. Now I can see them when the soil is freshly moisted (brown cricket bodies on dark wet peat).
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[indyana]

The pictures are really neat! Thanks for posting.