Keeping tons o' baby Crickets - HELP

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cloud jaguar

cloud jaguar

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Ok so my wife and I are temporarily fed up with flies and will graduate most of our mantids to young crickets. We have on the way 1000 1/4 inch crickets from Mulberryfarms.com

We need some advice about how best to keep them alive. Not necessarily create a breeding group - just simply keep them alive. In the past it seems the crickets really enjoy feasting on each other and drying out like shrinki dinks.

What is the ideal setup to keep them alive?

SUBSTRATE: The word is that OATS are the best - is that right? How thick is this substrate and do they eat it or just poop in it? How often should we change it?

ENCLOSURE - what is best - 10 gal aquarium or critter keeper or what?

WATER - i expect a jar lid with sponge or gravel and water is fine?

F00D - dog food, leafy greens

LIGHT - in the past the light has just evaporated the water and dried out their enclosure beyond belief - is this necessary? Also we have been keepint them in garage where it gets cold - what is ideal place for them?

Basically, we just want to make sure they stay alive long enough to be worth the money they cost - nothing fancy - thanks for your help!

~Roland

 
I keep mine in a rubbermaid container, one that is about 20" x 16" x 18" high, or something like that, with the center cut out and wire screen hot glued onto the lid, they need good room temp warmth. Not in garage if it is cold, they wont live out there, they should live almost 5 to 6 weeks or however long it takes them to be adult if took care of. They need ground up food, I grind all my own and they thrive on it. It is my cricket chop on my site, but u can make your own too. It takes a while to hand grind it, but worth the trouble if u ask me! They need water in one form or another, fresh potatoes every day, or carrots, or I use a humidity foam and give them water on it and supplement it with the fresh vegies! Every other day, check for dead and remove them or they will rot and smell, does this help? also use wire screen or they will chew thru others.

 
Hmm... All I can recommend is to give them a good moisture source.

I can never keep the little buggers alive...

Hence why I switched to roaches. :)

 
Oh yea, I forgot to say, I use sand as a substrate, and u can just strain the dead and nasties away, I use the no see um screen on a hand made strainer I used from the grandbabies toys, it was a small batmitten or ping pong paddle, i cliped the inside out and hot glue screen to it and use one of their shovels to shovel up the sand,,,, poor grandbabies, granny using all their toys! :rolleyes: Someone on here gave me the idea to use sand, I think it was Skberko!

 
Here is what I do and I hope you take my advice. Get yourself a rubbermaid tub. Make it a fairly good size because most of these will mature before you use them up. Cover the bottom with about a half inch of dry oatmeal. Put in some egg crates for them to hide in/on. Get a small shallow dish and put some gravel in it to prevent drowning and make sure they can get in and out of it. Might have to arrange your egg crates to help with this.

Have this set up before you get them. Once you get them dump them in and feed them. Most shipments I get come with egg crates so you can reuse those. I feed mine things like fish food, green leafy veggies (not iceberg lettuce but stuff like spring mix), dry dog food, etc. I feed them every couple days. Remove any uneaten food. I also cut the middle from the lid for the tub and glue in some mesh. This way you get airflow.

That is it. It is very simple regardless of what some people may tell you. Get a long pair of tweezers so you can grab them out. Don't listen to those who say crickets are going to kill your mantids. Feed the crickets well and take care of them and they are just fine. Any questions just ask me.

 
The most maintenance-free program for me is just oat bran and carrots in deli tubs with egg crate or cardboard. Occasionally use Flukers' for the watering...usually in a dish of some sort.

While they do eat the oats, I use it mainly to keep things relatively dry. Wet enclosures smell more and are probably less sanitary. I use a thin/sparse layer unless it gets wet. If it does, I add more oats. Replace egg crate when it is soiled or stays wet.

I also use the small and large Kricket Keepers that come with black tubes for the housing. Works well, but I hate cleaning them between batches. In those, I water with paper towels folded in a dish. Fluker's when I'm too lazy to do that.

Agreed with Rick about the CricketFear being rediculoso ...I'm sure you wouldn't have bought 1,000 if you believed any of that!

 
Thanks everyone for your help - i am confident we will not kill all of them :) I really don't think i believe the cricket scare - except the part about needing to gut load them first before feeding if from Petsmart or Petco! Our limbatas are real piglets and do seem to prefer crickets for now - of course some mantids are strict fly eaters, but until our Ghosts hatch or we get some Gongys, these young meaty treats should do just fine!

*Oddly, i have discovered a strange invader to the last cricket cage i prepared in a large critter keeper with dirt from our garden. You know how sometimes you find a box in storage with these odd little shed skins that look like ice-cream cones? Well they belong to these weird worm like bugs that have legs and are white bellied like maggots but have dark plates on their backs - they are shaped almost like ladybird larvae but with plates on their back and covered with dark hairs. They move pretty fast. Anyways, we discovered them eating the dead cickets and they actually grew pretty large in there - about 1/2 an inch! I tried to feed them to the mantids and they were definitely left alone until after a couple of days i removed them and fed with crix which the mantids voraciously consumed. Not sure what those creepy bugs are - does anyone know? My brother and i always called them Museum Bugs!

~Arkanis

 
I'm thinking it's larder beetle larvae

Did it look like this?:

larder_beetle_larvae.jpg


 
When i had crickets for my Chinese water dragon i would just feed the crickets lettuce and other food scraps that are healthy also had special cricket food

 
revmdn said:
What's the ideal temperature for keeping crickets?
Click to expand...
It depends on what you want to do with them. I buy about six dozen pinheads a week, and want them to remain that size until they are eaten, so I don't push large amounts of food or high temperatures. Mine do nicely at about 80F to 85F (room temperature) summer and winter, but when I was in Casa Grande, AZ, in the early part of January, young crickets were thriving (they invade the warm concrete patios after sunset) at nighttime temperatures of around 37F.

 
Arkanis said:
Exactly! thanks Kamakiri. Are those poisonous or anything? They must taste bad or something because the mantids left those well alone.
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No idea if they are poisonous, but I doubt it. Most poisonous fauna evolve to be brightly colored or obviously patterned. I'd suspect the hairs, bad taste, maybe even 'undesireable' movement/motion.

 
Since we're on this cricket thing, and since Arkanis is ordering them en masse and Kamakiri just posted a nice note about getting crix from Mulberry Farms, I'd like to say a good word for local pet stores, or at least the ones that I use. I occasionally see comments on this forum about store-bought crix causing a whole bunch of mantis problems that I would have ascribed to other husbandry issues or inadequate feeding, and it would be a pity if this caused new members of the forum to avoid this most obvious and convenient source of supply without at least checking them out.

If a store doesn't maintain its cricket supply properly, the crix will die and they will make a loss, so most of them are pretty careful. Like Rick, I belong to the "toss 'em in and scoop 'em out" school of cricket keeping, and I usually lose under 5%/week (3-4) in the container, which is more to the credit of the producer (often the same guy that we order from by mail, of course) and the store, than it is to me.

Besides, some of the staff at my local store are pretty cute..... :p

 
I've never had a problem with the pet store crickets, but I never really gave them much of a chance. I always order them from suppliers. I think I'm going to try roaches soon though. Yeah, I miss them pet shop girls myself. :p

 
Main reason I avoid pet store crickets is the price. Around here they want like $.12 apiece for them. I can get 1K online for something like $20 and they are a much better quality.

 

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