storing, prepping and feeding crickets

[InkyCat]

So I got my beardies yesterday along with a couple of plastic tubs of small brown crickets. I have put a lump of carrot in each tub for the crickets to eat. At meal times I pop open one end off the tub and tip a few crickets and the bits they are on into a litre sandwich bag, add a little calcium powder and shake them a little before upending the bag into the viv for my dragons. They quickly all scarper and find places to hide and my beardies will occasionally just nab one in passing and eat it, but they certainly are not legging it round the viv munching them all. So I have decided to keep it going in the buffet style instead of just giving them set feed times, at least while they are settling in.

So does this sound ok? any nifty techniques for feeding them so they don't just hide? Also how do people store their bugs and decant them. And finally how long do the crickets live for, how often do I need to buy more?

 

[CooperDragon]

I suggest feeding them in small batches of 5 or so. They are easier to track that way so no stragglers are left over. Dragons are sometimes conservative hunters and will wait for crickets to get near them so you can just direct them around a bit with a nudge of your finger.

Crickets last about a month at most from what I've seen. I ordered them in bulk and kept them in a 20g tank with a screen top. They lived in cardboard tubes on one side and their water gel and food was on the other. I fed them grain feed mix from premiumcrickets along with some fresh veges for gutloading and variety.

I cleaned the tank about once a week or so. I kept them on a wood shaving bedding so I'd remove the food, move them all to one side, scoop and replace the wood shavings then put the cardboard to the other side and move them again, repeating on the other side. A little bit of a pain but not too hard to do.

 

[Gentlemommy]

I am by No means an expert, but I'll share what we do. Because I am grossed out by insects, I keep the crickets in a cricket keeper, inside of a larger critter keeper, inside of a Rubbermaid tub. Outside. I do not bring them in the house at all. When Oscar needs to eat, I take him outside, let him sunbathe for a minute while I open the Rubbermaid container, take out the bigger critter keeper (which holds the smaller cricket keeper) and place Oscar inside. Then I use the black tube like things in the cricket keeper to remove some crickets and dump them into a Baggie to dust, then straight away into the big tub for him to eat. There isn't a place for them to hide, I can accurately gauge how many he eats at every meal, and if he doesn't finish one or two, I simply leave them in there for later on in the day. It's my *no touch or escape foolproof super easy and sanitary method*. I use a damp sponge for water and those orange cubes for food for the crickets. We are going through about 100 per week, but I only buy 50 at a time, since I feel the cricket keeper is too small for more than that amount. On Wednesdays and Sundays, I completely wash out all the enclosures while he gets his bath in a kiddie pool. Those are the days I refill on crickets, so that way every time I get new crickets they go into a completely clean container.

I find this method to be no more work than keeping the crickets contained inside and putting them in oscars tank, waiting ten minutes, then fishing them back out again. Gross. I also found that when I was putting them and leaving them in his tank, I *thought* he was eating them all, and it turns out when I'd clean his tank, I'd find a bunch had hidden and died under the mat, in his blanket, ect. Not sanitary.