Most of my crickets die! help me

[stephane110]

I have one of those plastic critter keepers that I use to keep the crickets for my leo. In it I have some egg carton, and some cardboard from the container I buy my crickets in from the store. I also have a bottle cap with water gel, and another with some gutload from my local pet store.

Normally I feed my leopard gecko mealworms in the morning since I'm short on time, and crickets at night(he is still a youngster so i feed him twice a day).

Last weekend I bought a box of 100 crickets.
This past week i have been super busy, so I've only fed crickets on two occasions(about 9 crickets each time).
Last night I went to go grab some crickets from my container when I realized almost every single one was dead. I was able to find 6 alive ones in the mass of dead cricket bodies.

I was wondering what could cause this die-off.
And how I can prevent it.

thanks in advance

 

[ElapidSVT]

normally crickets only live for about a week after reaching adult stage.
try purchasing medium size and they should last a bit longer 4u

good luck!

 

[stephane110]

I buy 2 week crickets so arent they far from adults?

 

[Dama682]

I buy 2 week crickets so arent they far from adults?

Crickets take about 4 weeks from hatching to reach adulthood, if I recall correctly. This does seem to be a problem, then.

Do you know the temperature of your setup? Temperature doesn't affect crickets very drastically, but if it's extreme enough, it's possible.

Another possibility is that you could've simply gotten a bad batch. Perhaps there was disease or parasites on those crickets, leading to a mass death.

 

[Tony C]

What is the calcium content of your gutload? High calcium gutloads are intended for short-term (24-48 hour) feeding, and will result in high mortality rates after that.

 

[stephane110]

The temp is about 70+ degrees. I dont think my gutload has calcium in it, it seems like it just grounded oatmeal or something but im not sure

 

[stephane110]

Oops i just found out the gutload did have calcium. So i bought another type of hutload i hope it works out now