Cricket Heaven. Or is it??

[Digger]

I buy my feeders @ PetSmart, and have yet to suffer any problems. Easier too, since I nuy such small batches.

Have to laugh to wonder what they're saying to each other when transferred from the stinking heck hole @ PetSmart, to this sanitized hotel. "Hey Jiminy - what the heck did we do to deserve THIS? Did we croak and is this heaven?? Is there a bar?

Generally have good luck keeping these healthy. Lots of food (oatmeal, carrots, lettuce, dry cat food, Flukers), lots of hiding spots and a quiet environment. This seems to keep the dumb clucks from eating each other.

I don't use substrate (as you see), which makes cleaning and sanitizing (91% isopropol) very easy. Guess when I take one over to Nikki Mantis, the cricket thinks it's a walk in Central Park. Until Nikki sees it and it quickly turns into a John Carpenter movie. :devil:

 

[Paradoxica]

Looks good, but I have heard that too much carrots in feeders can be toxic to mantids.

 

[Digger]

Carrots bad feeder food for mantids? Hmm. Anybody else have trouble with carroted crickets?

Thanks Paradox.

 

[Ranitomeya]

I used to keep crickets on carrots, my mantids tended to die off rather quickly after vomiting orangish mush. After reading about the possibility that carrots might be toxic to mantids, I switched them off of carrots and onto leafy greens and fish food and noticed that I experienced almost no vomiting and the resulting die-off. I suggest that you keep the food and water crystals inside a dish, as having them placed directly on the floor of the container will make it much easier for the crickets to soil them with their feces and cause an outbreak of disease. Not to mention, it'll be much easier to clean the entire container if the bottom of it isn't encrusted with spoiled food and wet, moldy feces.

 

[angelofdeathzz]

Um, I think thats Flukers cricket cubes not water crystals, but you make a good point. I simply drop in a few Kix kids cereal quickly moistened in water every few days and a leafy green once in a while and the crickets all live till I feed them off several weeks later, and repeat. My scorpions are all doing very well on them for quite some time now, very low cost, simple and efficient.

 

[Digger]

Much oblige Cricketeers. Appreciate the valuable advice The carrots have been pulled permanently. Now they're for me only. Rantid, I found the little buggers crapped in dish-held Flukers as well. Every couple of days the mountain-climbing paper gets changed and I swab cricket turds away with a dampened cotton ball. Is there a finishing school where I can send these drunken bums??

 

[Mime454]

Cricket purgatory?

 

[Rick]

The yellow cricket cube things are a waste of money by the way. I like to use a substrate of oatmeal.

 

[fleurdejoo]

I have fed my crickets carrots and never had a problem. But they are organic.

 

[Digger]

Rick, I need to get moisture to them and Flukers is the easiest method. Moist food like apples and bananas dry out too quickly to be effective, imo. I have watched the crickets, and they do eat the Flukers. True, the gel dries out too, but I find it lasts longer than fruit. What say you? What source do you use for moisture intake? (I could try martinis to make them behave).

 

[Sublime64tothe42]

I suggest dandelion leaves and bee pollen.