Self sustaining cricket enclosure

[acpart]

I'm wondering if anyone has tried letting the crickets breed and grow in any type of gecko's enclosure so you end up with a colony of crickets that the gecko can hunt as the young ones mature. I do understand the issue of not leaving crickets in the cage with geckos, but especially in my planted tanks, it happens and I can't get them out. I tried deliberately breeding crickets in my gold dust day gecko tank: I put 10 adults crickets in, males and females and put in a covered "cave" with gutload. It didn't seem to work. I've had crickets breeding in my AFT tank and possibly in my crestie tank. I find that there is not much chance of the tank getting overrun --most of the crickets don't survive. Has anyone else tried this?

Aliza

 

[badjuice]

no but seems smart

 

[M_surinamensis]

Crickets are cannibals. You won't get a self sustaining group sufficient to feed a predatory lizard in an enclosed space because they will eat their own eggs and young.

You either end up with not enough of them making it to adulthood to continue breeding after the short life span of your initial adults has ended, or with so many of them shoved in there to try jump starting it that they attack your lizard.

You might get away with it if you're using an enclosure with a footprint of about thirty or forty square feet with a small number of little lizards, but even that is likely to throw off the balance every so often and would be pretty terrible for viewing the geckos.

 

[patch gecko]

BREEDING IN TANK

Hey Here is Something I Was going to get its not for breeding although they probably would

read the stuff on this product http://www.livefoodsbypost.co.uk/exo-terra-termite-hill-cricket-feeder-pt2823-2550-p.asp

 

[acpart]

Soon after I posted this, I realized that crickets were breeding in my fat tail enclosure which at this point is a sparsely planted viv with eco earth. What I chose to do was to put a small dish of cricket feed in the enclosure and then several times a day I would put a shot glass over the dish, trapping the crickets, and move it to another tank. I actually got several hundred small crickets into the other tank. There is a relatively small number of baby crickets in there now, probably fewer than 50 that are about 1/4". They have plenty of food and moisture, don't bother the geckos as far as I can see. I move them as I can catch them, but I may end up with a small number that grow into feeder size.

Aliza