I have been searching for a site where I can order micro crickets and have shipped to Pennsylvania. I can find plenty of cricket and fruit fly sites but I want to test micro crickets to both
nymphs and adults and check the difficulty of breeding crickets one more time.
crickets are insanely easy to breed. Question is, do you have the space and time for them?
Keeping them a live and well isn't a quick 2 minute task per day yah know, but I'll totally help you out.
Get a huge plastic bin from home depot... like 4 ft long 3 ft wide 3 ft deep.
Cut a sqaure foot out of each side, hot glue or duct tape a very fine, metal screen. Metal is a must, plastic is easily chewed by crickets.
Buy egg crate flats, you can get them cheap at LLLreptile.com. Also a day light bulb, 150 watt.
Cut out most of the lid, replace it with metal screen. Get couple pieces of wood, prop up the clamp light on one end.
Crickets should have day light 24/7 if you want them laying eggs 24/7.
Buy atleast 5,000 3/4 inch crickets, they'll molt to FRESH adults within 10 days, and this way, you know you'll have FRESH ADULTS.
Stack the egg crates, place a thin piece of cardboard in between the flates, just so they don't collapse since they fit perfectly into one another.
Get two shallow container lids of some sort, and here are the two things you need to keep these crickets healthy.
Dry food that consists of: 1 cup of Oat meal, 1/4 cup of powdered skim milk, 4 cups of cat food. Ground this all up in a coffee grinder or something that can get it to a fine powder.
Keeping crickets hydrated is a HUGE problem with people who loss crickets without knowing what happened.
Ghann.com has a great cricket water giver. Cricket water pillows work too! Mulberryfarms.com
I hate soaking a sponge, paper towel, cotton, just doesn't fit well with my experiences.
Water crystals don't work well with crickets.
The temperature should be in the low 90's for crickets. This is why keeping up with making sure their water isn't running out is important.
Egg laying substrate, peat moss mixed with fine coarse vermiculite.
3 cups peat moss + 1/2 cup vermiculite.
Soak it and mix it up nicely.
Pack it into the chinese container or whatever 2 inch deep container you can find.
Let it dry for an hour, then place it in the bin with the crickets.
Place it on the opposite end where the light is located. The light will dry out the substrate and the eggs quickly if it is right over it.
The substrate needs to stay slightly moist. So keep a water sprayer handy, make sure the mist is very fine. Mist the soil twice a day, few sprays is ideal.
Every 2 days take out the tray and place it in a large container. Put a brand new egg laying container in with the crickets.
The egg containers should be incubated at 100 degrees for very fast hatching. Make sure you get a set-up that works best for this. Having a heatpad under each is expensive, having a light over them will dry them out.
I suggest investing in a large cabinet, and hang one 150 watt bulb in it. This will keep the cabinet at 95-100 degrees.
The egg trays should be kept inside of the large container they're in, with the lid tightly cealed on. Poke a few nickle sizes holes on the lid. If the substrate gets too wet, with no air ventilation, mold tends to grow.
Mist the soil as needed, probably only once a day.
When the pinheads hatch, aka micro crickets, they will be swarming. Probably close to a few thousand. Transport them into a large bin, like the bin the adult crickets are in. Same set-up, just no egg laying container.
Pin heads are not hard to keep a live if you keep them well hydrated. They die from thirst FAST, so always have a water source available.
The same sort of food should be provided for them to grow properly.
Whatever you're feeding, make sure those crickets that are planned on being offered to, have been eating healthy foods. Cat food is a horrible gut load. The other two are great though!
You will end up with tons of containers stacked up.
NOTE: THIS IS A GREAT WAY TO INVEST IN A NEVER ENDING SUPPLY OF PINHEADS.
NOTE: IF YOU BREED ANIMALS, AND JUST NEED A SMALL AMOUNT OF PINHEADS, OR SIMPLY DON'T HAVE THE TIME TO BREED CRICKETS, HOOK UP WITH GHANN.COM'S GREAT BREEDER PROGRAM. The prices in the ghann's GREAT breeder program beat any other cricket breeder's prices out of the water!!!!
