Storing Crickets

[jkeeney1]

Ever since the impaction i experienced with stitch i no longer want to store the crickets with him in the cage. How should i store the crickets and what do i do to keep them alive? also, how should i feed him in the future? How does everybody else feed their beardies?

 

[jkeeney1]

Anybody?

 

[carlisv]

We buy crickets 1000 at a time (we have two adult beardies) and just keep them in a rubbermaid tub in the guest bathroom. No lid - they can't jump straight up so can't get out. My brilliant husband drilled holes in the sides the size of the tubes that come with cricket keepers, and we use those tubes in addition to the egg crate that the crickets come with. So when it's cricket time, we just shake a tube-full of crickets into a plastic cup and sprinkle them with calcium, and tilt the cup slightly so our babies can pick the crickets off one at a time.

Here's our tub:

I make my own cricket chow - equal parts kitten chow, oatmeal, and milk powder with a handful of beardie bites, ground to powder in a food processor. Our vet gave us great advice - to wait until after dark to put the fresh veggies in. Crickets are nocturnal, so if the veggies are fresh when they're looking for food they'll get more benefit from them. And I've found that if I chop the greens very finely, there's less waste. Crickets drag the veggies all over the bin, so if they're cut finely, they only steal a tiny piece instead of taking a big one and depriving the others. As for water, a couple of spoonfuls of cricket gel with calcium lasts a couple of days.

You have to make sure the crickets are in a place where there won't be any fumes. Crickets are very sensitive to fumes and smells, so hair spray, air freshener, cleaning products and the like will kill them - that's why ours are in the guest bathroom and not ours. Also, if you clean the dead ones out (I just use a plastic spoon) every day or two there's no smell.

I bet I spend less than 10 minutes a day on cricket maintenance.

 

[jkeeney1]

We buy crickets 1000 at a time (we have two adult beardies) and just keep them in a rubbermaid tub in the guest bathroom. No lid - they can't jump straight up so can't get out. My brilliant husband drilled holes in the sides the size of the tubes that come with cricket keepers, and we use those tubes in addition to the egg crate that the crickets come with. So when it's cricket time, we just shake a tube-full of crickets into a plastic cup and sprinkle them with calcium, and tilt the cup slightly so our babies can pick the crickets off one at a time.

Here's our tub:

I make my own cricket chow - equal parts kitten chow, oatmeal, and milk powder with a handful of beardie bites, ground to powder in a food processor. Our vet gave us great advice - to wait until after dark to put the fresh veggies in. Crickets are nocturnal, so if the veggies are fresh when they're looking for food they'll get more benefit from them. And I've found that if I chop the greens very finely, there's less waste. Crickets drag the veggies all over the bin, so if they're cut finely, they only steal a tiny piece instead of taking a big one and depriving the others. As for water, a couple of spoonfuls of cricket gel with calcium lasts a couple of days.

You have to make sure the crickets are in a place where there won't be any fumes. Crickets are very sensitive to fumes and smells, so hair spray, air freshener, cleaning products and the like will kill them - that's why ours are in the guest bathroom and not ours. Also, if you clean the dead ones out (I just use a plastic spoon) every day or two there's no smell.

I bet I spend less than 10 minutes a day on cricket maintenance.

Do you think a small 10 gallon aquarium tank would work fine to hold a couple hundred crickets at a time? I have put 200 in before and i looked a couple days later and they were all dead. What did i do wrong?

 

[carlisv]

A ten-gallon should be fine for a couple hundred crickets. Were the ones that died in that tank? If so, I wouldn't use it again. It may be giving off fumes or have some kind of contaminant that killed them. A cheap Rubbermaid one will work just as well, and they're light and easy to move around if you need to.

If they all died at once, it may have been a bad batch, or food that went bad and spread mold or fungus. You have to be careful to always have something for them to drink - either cricket gel, orange slices, or fresh veggies. They die of dehydration quickly - two days or so. And like I said before, hair spray, room deodorizer, toilet cleaner, all kinds of things spread fumes that will kill the whole bunch within a couple of hours.

Are you sure they were actually dead crickets? They may have been discarded shells from the crickets growing and molting. If you take good care of them, you should have hundreds of shed shells within a week of getting them - they grow that fast with good care.

 

[DanaW]

I order 1000 at a time and keep them in a 20 long tank with a lid of food and lid for water cubes. Haven't had too many die. I've noticed if they are overcrowded they die faster it seems. I feed mine small batches at a time and when they start to act full quit dropping crickets in, normally they don't have any left over in there cage that way and if they do I pick them out one by one lol.