Cricket Care 101: First, you want a good sized rubbermaid bin, I use the ones that are roughly 30x18x18. What is it? Like 32 quart maybe? Anyway... you cut a square in the top. The bigger you cut it, the more ventilation they get. Cover the square with screen. 1/2 inch or smaller crickets and you can probably get away with nylon screen. Bigger than that and it absolutely must be metal screen. Now that you have your basic box, you put in your egg crate. I use whole pieces. Put one, sprinkle a little dry food on it, add a second and sprinkle a little dry food on that one. Now, you add a few small pieces on top that are good for getting the crickets out of the bin. At the other end of the box you put a small plastic lid where you will put fresh greens (same stuff you feed the dragons is fine) and you put a small dish with cotton or a sponge in it to hold water.
Now, EVERY DAY what you are going to do is remove everything from the bin. Start with the food and water dish. Then shake the crickets into the bin and set the pieces of egg crate aside. You now have nothing in the bin except crickets, leftover food and waste. Tilt the bin onto one corner. What you want is all of the crickets together piled into the corner. Don't worry. Won't hurt them. You will probably need to kinda bounce / bang the bin on the corner to get them all there. Holding the bin like this, wipe the rest of the bin with a damp cloth. Now, tilt the bin to the opposite corner and do exactly the same thing. You have officially wiped out all of the waste and what remains in the corner is the crickets, waste, leftover food and any dead crickets. Set the bin flat and replace your egg crate with a little dry food to the clean corner. Go clean and refresh your vegetables and water dish while you wait for the crickets to crawl back over to their egg crate. By the time you return, there should be an orderly pile of waste in the corner with only a few crickets still around. Using a small paintbrush, sweep the waste onto some sort of dust bin. (I use large index cards.) Throw the waste in the trash. Give one more quick wipe in that corner with the cloth and replace your veggie and water dishes. You now have a clean cricket bin.
The best way to keep healthy dragons is to feed them healthy insects. This is why I breed my own insects. But whatever you do for crickets, by keeping them exceptionally clean like this you will avoid the bacteria and conditions that make the crickets unhealthy and potentially your dragons unhealthy. Additionally, if you actually follow these instructions daily, you will never have any cricket odor.
On a side note, I have stopped keeping crickets. Reason for this is that my babies have decided they don't like them and I find worms easier to keep. I started a superworm colony in January and I now have more of them than I know what to do with. It was a slow process, but well worth the work and the wait. And they are sooooooo much easier to keep.
Good luck taking care of Fiz. I'm off to cuddle and baby Fluffy for a while.
