Help my crickets live!

[Ethelia]

Hi all,

Well Miso has recently become less of a fusspot when it comes to her food. Previously she would only eat dubias but now she's started to eat crix /wallet does happydance.
I cant breed the crickets, but I can buy in bulk.
Anyway Im trying to keep them alive as long as possible which I seem to be struggling with.

At the moment I have around 200 in an extra large cricket keeper. It has ventilation and feeding tubes.
I have two stacks of egg crates inside for them to hide in,
A plastic lid with their food on (currently oats, bran and rocket leaves)
A dish with a constant supply of cricket gelwater.
I do not have anything as substrate for them.

The cricket keeper is ontop of Rubens viv towards the back. This provides them with warmth and I kept my dubia's like this for months without an issues.
But after only a day of use I opened the keeper up to change their food and water to find about 20 dead crickets.
Is this their normal lifespan or am I doing something wrong?

HALP!
Im open to any suggestions ^_^
Thanks!

Holly

 

[Claudiusx]

Personaly I don't think crickets need heat, I just put them in the most convient spot I can find. Also when one cricket dies I heard the give off nocious fumes that can kill other crickets so you want to remove all the dead crickets instead on leaving them in there.

 

[Ethelia]

Thanks, Ive been doing a corpse-clear out once a day so far.

 

[Claudiusx]

Maybe they are over-crowded? I'm not sure, how big is the container your keeping them in?

 

[Ethelia]

The container is pretty large. There is alot of room for them as Ive got stacks of egg crates to provide extra surface area. Its no where near at capacity.
Perhaps I got a dodgy batch of crix?

 

[Claudiusx]

Im not sure it seems like it. I don't really know what the life span of crickets are, maybe you just got unlucky? :?

 

[Chunka]

mine are always dying too! I'd love any tips to help out, I'm also using the same thing as you but mine mostly live in the cabinet where the back is open, its under the viv and room temp.

 

[clear]

Crickets are stressed easily, and have a short life span (6-8 weeks). They need a lot of room, great ventilation and air flow. Any condensation will kill them also. Low protein food shortens the life span from what I heard also.

 

[ddma]

i buy 1000 crickets at a time, i keep them in a large cricket keeper. i feed them , gerber mixed grain cereal flakes, wwheat bran, fish flakes, bearded dragon bites (the moist ones). whatever veggies and greens i give my dragons i throw in there. i also give them raw sweet potatoes, regular potatoes, carrots, fluker's orange cubes. you can also feed them chicken feed and high protein dry cat food i clean my cricket keeper every other day and replace the food. i do find some dead ones but that's normal. mine last me 7 to 10 days , not because they die but because my dragons are little pigs. also , depending on the size crickets you get depends on howw long they live, thier life span is 4-6 weeks. so if you're buying full grown crickets they 've only got about another week or so to live. i never really worry about temperature. i keep them in my laundry room, just never outside on a porch or patio.

 

[momof2boys]

How do you clean your keeper every other day? Do you have an alternate keeper to put the live ones in? I'm so disgusted at the crickets... It's the worst part of having a dragon, IMO. Gross. Can't wait for him to be bigger so he's not eating so much meat. Any tips on how to clean out while still having live crix would be appreciated.

 

[ddma]

it's really not that bad cleaning cricket keeper.my son had a bearded dragon a few years back and i was so grossed out by crix!! they reminded me of cockroaches, i can do lizards of all kinds, snakes, but i couldn't do crix (or rodents) .i now own 2 - 4 month old dragons and a 9 week old, my 9 week old eats 1/2 inch crix , my 4 month olds just this week graduated to 3/4 inch -- omg !!! they are huge, you can put saddles on them ! i was alittle freaked out by those but now it's almost been a week, and i'm not so freaked out any more.
well since i have 2 different size crix right now , i have 2 cricket keepers, one is an 18 gallon rubbermaid tub that we put together and the other one is a real cricket keeper that i bought used from my local reptile store.

first i take out all of the egg crates and paper towel tubes (bang off the crix , of coarse) , at this point the crickets start climbing up the sides, but they only go so far they don't really climb all the way up (an occaisional one here and there) then i take my little mini dust pan and broom (i purchased at walmart for 2.00) and i sweep all the debris, the crix will move out of your way, after sweeping out, i replenish the food with fresh, put back all egg crates and paper towel tubes, cover . done. it takes me all of about 10 minutes, i do it every other day, my crickets do not smell, and i hardly lose any as far as them dying. hope this helps you.

 

[momof2boys]

18 gallon! Do you keep that in your house? That's huge! But it makes sense how you can clean it without the little buggers jumping out!!

Thanks.

 

[ddma]

yeah , i keep on top of my washer in my laundry room, it's no bother, but that's why they don't die, they have plenty of room and don't trample each other, i get 1,000 crix at a time for 20.00, wwhen i was buying 100 at a time i as spending 10.00 do the math. so not only does it save me frequent trips to reptile store, but saves me a bit of money.