Best way to order and keep crickets

[jenn4turtles]

Hello, everyone!

I am new to the world of Bearded Dragons; we just bought ours over the weekend. When we were first thinking about getting one, I used this site for research ... Lots of good info!

Our little dragon, Smaug, is young, maybe about a month old, and only a few inches long. I've been going to PetSmart to get small crickets, which I keep in a Cricket Keeper. The tubes in the Keeper make it easy to get them out; I even throw some calcium dust in there and shake lightly to coat them. I was told to put an orange slice in there for food/juice. We don't live near a PetSmart though, and driving to the nearest one (about 20 miles away) to buy 20-25 at a time is going to be tough (although I will for the little guy if I have to ).

What sites do y'all use to order crickets? And when you order them in the 100s, how do you keep them alive? Ones that I bought Saturday all already dying, and it's only Monday! The Cricket Keeper is small, so it won't hold an order of them. What can I use instead?

Thanks for any suggestions!

 

[CooperDragon]

There are lots of options for ordering crickets. I use premiumcrickets/georgiacrickets and have good luck. It's MUCH cheaper to order them online in bulk. You will need to set up a cricket tank (I use a 20gal tank with a screen top but a big plastic bin will work too) and order them a bit smaller than you need at the moment. They arrive in a vented box. I use a box cutter and cut the thin side off the box and then dump the whole cricket load into the tank. I have them live in cardboard tubes on one side of the tank with the food and water on the other. To clean it I shake out the cardboard on one side then move it to the other and chase the live crickets over to the cardboard. I remove the substrate (I use wood chips for hamsters etc) on the empty side to get rid of the dead crickets and other stuff. I then put down new substrate and then move the cardboard back to that side. I then repeat on the other side. It's not too bad once you get a routine down. I used the cricket food (grain based) and water crystals available on the same website. I put veggies in their tank to help gut load as well. 1,000 last about a month. I also noticed that the crickets were much happier with warmer temps. My basement was in the mid 60s in the winter and when I put a tank heating pad on the outside of their tank they congregated around it and were much happier with temps in the 70s.

 

[jenn4turtles]

I live in Louisiana, so I won't have to worry about keeping them warm until December ... If even then! Lol.

I think I'm gonna try the plastic bin. All my aquariums have fish in them. I'm doing an orange slice in the small Cricket Keeper, but a few have drowned in the juice from it. The Keeper has tubes in it that really help, so I can see how the cardboard tubes would work. Gonna give it a try! Thanks!

 

[CooperDragon]

The water crystals work really well. You can also use a wet sponge to provide water. I found that toilet paper tubes and paper towel tubes work just like the keeper tubes do. Easy to just replace as needed. Let me know how it goes, and if you have any other questions.

 

[jenn4turtles]

I found an empty, clear plastic bin with high sides in my attic that I wasn't using, so I'm going to order them today! Thanks for all the advice!

 

[GrowingaBeard]

Funny you're in Louisiana...I'm in California but order my crickets from Louisiana. I'm a new beardie owner (since early April) and Blaze (about 7 mos old) eats about 40 crickets a day, so I buy 500 at a time shipped to me. After a rough start, I've got a pretty good cricket setup: I got a clear sterlite tub (clear for the slick sides), not sure how many gallons but a bit bigger than a banker's box. I cut out a big section of the lid and glued in metal screen. The "bulk" crickets live in there in my garage. We have a medium size (around shoebox size) cricket keeper that we keep indoors and feed Blaze out of that, just refilling from the garage stash as needed. Both cricket tubs are stocked with fluker's quencher, powdered cricket food, some bearded dragon pellets (Blaze won't touch them but crickets think they're candy, LOL) and veggie scraps.

I order from Armstrong Crickets...so far so good except for a couple things - they just raised their cricket and shipping prices (bummer), and they only ship Mondays and Tuesdays so I have to plan carefully. Have had to suck it up and buy crickets from the pet store a few times in between shipments, but at 12 cents per cricket no way could I sustain that for long! Pet store crickets are no good anyway, always some of the wrong size, and seems like I get shorted on the count.

Good luck!

 

[jenn4turtles]

Funny you're in Louisiana...I'm in California but order my crickets from Louisiana. I'm a new beardie owner (since early April) and Blaze (about 7 mos old) eats about 40 crickets a day, so I buy 500 at a time shipped to me. After a rough start, I've got a pretty good cricket setup: I got a clear sterlite tub (clear for the slick sides), not sure how many gallons but a bit bigger than a banker's box. I cut out a big section of the lid and glued in metal screen. The "bulk" crickets live in there in my garage. We have a medium size (around shoebox size) cricket keeper that we keep indoors and feed Blaze out of that, just refilling from the garage stash as needed. Both cricket tubs are stocked with fluker's quencher, powdered cricket food, some bearded dragon pellets (Blaze won't touch them but crickets think they're candy, LOL) and veggie scraps.

I order from Armstrong Crickets...so far so good except for a couple things - they just raised their cricket and shipping prices (bummer), and they only ship Mondays and Tuesdays so I have to plan carefully. Have had to suck it up and buy crickets from the pet store a few times in between shipments, but at 12 cents per cricket no way could I sustain that for long! Pet store crickets are no good anyway, always some of the wrong size, and seems like I get shorted on the count.

Good luck!

My crickets come from Georgia. LOL. I may need to look into Armstrong!

I'm not sure what size my Rubbermaid tub is, but I cut a large rectangle out of the lid and hot-glued a wire screen to it for ventilation. I use the small Keeper for a handful - enough for a day or so, then refill it, as needed. It's too hot here, so I can't put them outside (Oh! How I wish!).

Smaug doesn't touch the pellets either, so I do the same thing! I also give them Fluker's orange cubes and other foods I have handy: slices of orange, extra kale, tried to give them squash and watermelon, but they didn't eat any ... Whatever extra I have.