Petsmart

[meaganelise9]

I don't think anyone's started a thread for Petsmart yet that I can find... Anyway, I often go to Petsmart for feeders, sometimes against my better judgement. It's convenient for Hydei, when they're in stock, though the quality of the cultures varies. It's usually about $6 a vial. Those are usually fine. The wax worms usually seem near death. I bought some crickets yesterday, labeled as 24 or 25 per box or something. Of those 9 of them were dead, one was missing a leg, and the rest were very hungry.

Convenient for fruit flies, but for crickets, it's hardly worth the money, when I can drive a little farther for crickets that are all living and have been cared for.

 

[Bryce08]

I don't think anyone's started a thread for Petsmart yet that I can find... Anyway, I often go to Petsmart for feeders, sometimes against my better judgement. It's convenient for Hydei, when they're in stock, though the quality of the cultures varies. It's usually about $6 a vial. Those are usually fine. The wax worms usually seem near death. I bought some crickets yesterday, labeled as 24 or 25 per box or something. Of those 9 of them were dead, one was missing a leg, and the rest were very hungry.

Convenient for fruit flies, but for crickets, it's hardly worth the money, when I can drive a little farther for crickets that are all living and have been cared for.

they have the pre boxed crickets, but if i gety any from there which is where I get them if i do get crickets...i get the ones they they have and bag seperatly...and yes they are my source for backup hydeis...expensive and yes cultures vary quite a bit lol.

 

[meaganelise9]

Ok, so I can go in and ask them to bag me some decent guys out of the bin instead of the boxed ones?

 

[dlemmings]

the Petsmart near me bags the quantity to order, however I found I get better quality and price from a local reptile store (Reptile Outlet) I feel like they are more concerned with the feeders being healthy, they offer fruit flies and can order housefly pupa (but I still order those online)

 

[Bryce08]

Ok, so I can go in and ask them to bag me some decent guys out of the bin instead of the boxed ones?

yes!!!! they should have small and large ...2 serperate bins

 

[lunarstorm]

I have used Petsmart several times when I need feeders in a hurry (usually crickets) and I haven't had a negative experience yet. But I do suspect the big-store feeders are more expensive and not as high-quality as the various reputable small companies operating online.

Even with shipping costs and the risks that accompany shipping live animals, I suspect I'd save money and get better crickets if I just planned ahead and ordered them online.

 

[happy1892]

I culture Drosophila melanogaster fruit flies on smashed apple. They breed faster if they have Josh's Frogs media instead. I think smashed apple would work for D. hydei. Agent A told me that apple works to culture D. melanogaster. Six dollars is expensive. The cultures last a long time even though the apple looks like it is rotten.

 

[Mvalenz]

I go to Petsmart quite often for crickets. They do have the ones in the box, but i always ask for them to be bagged. They keep them in a bin with potato pieces or something like that. When I was looking for pinhead crickets Petsmart had the closest thing. Real tiny ones that were still white. It's funny that you started this thread because I purchased a D. hydei vial about three weeks ago. I didn't know better so i dumped them all in the enclosure. Didn't leave any to reproduce. Shortly after that the media was all dried up so i placed it on my dresser and forgot about it. This morning it was filled with fruitflies. Like a million of them. Now I just need a new mantis to feed them to.

 

[dragon]

At the Petsmart by me, the staff has gotten so used to seeing me, they generally allow me to pick out my own from the bin. (Why the heck would I want to you ask? Because I prefer getting the largest adults possible for my adult Ts, emperor scorpion, and large centipede -- easier for them to catch and once gut loaded the larger crickets hold more. Also allows me to weed out any obviously unhealthy ones.)

If you happen to have a herp expo near you, you should be able to obtain ff cultures there.

 

[petoly]

I don't trust petsmart or petco with their crickets That's why I raise my own, same for their fruit fly cultures. The hidey cultures are just pathetic for 5 bucks, and the melanos are half the size you get if you ordered them from mantisplace.com or other of our fellow members for the same price. Don't trust the crickets there. do you know what they feed them? wonder why there are such high cannibalism rates? yeah it's because they don't give a ###### about them. If you do buy crickets from there I would gutload them for at least a week to get whatever crappy food they were fed out of their system. A decent high protein gut load is cheap to make yourself. I'm not saying rear your own crickets (I do and I don't think its' a big deal, but I think it's fun too....besides I don't remember the last time I had to go to a pet store for feeders. I tell all my friends "my 14 lizards, 2 frogs, 20 fish and 8 mantids are free to feed for me. That's cheaper than your single dog or cat". )

either way petco and petsmart crickets usually are half dead. I give petsmart a little more credit than petco because the one that's here has cricket bins on display, so you can see they are rearing their own. Not sure if this is just for display for people or if they actually use them. I don't trust that semi dry blue cube of whatever it is that they put into the plastic enclosures with the crickets all crammed in there. Honestly even for 20 or so they need more room than the little boxes they put them in. Overcrowding leads to cannibalism. They also dry out more quickly. I would recommend to never buy crickets from prepackaged boxes. find a reputable feeder store that counts them for you from a bin, or just order online. I'm only saying all this because I do have experience with rearing crickets. Everyone tells me that my crickets are the fattest crickets they have ever seen (the adults) and they are feisty! they are more active than your standard grey or brown cricket at petco/petsmart and I know they are nutritious for my animal...heck I rarely ever have to dust them since The multivitamin and the calcium is in the cricket chow and that's all I feed them so they are constantly gutloaded. bottom line for petco/petsmart crickets....would you really want to feed your pet a feeder without knowing what that feeder ate? we want to make sure our feeders get the best nutrition so we can transfer it to our pets. Also you never know they might be giving them carrots for moisture instead of water gels, and we all know carrots are bad for mantids.

back to the fruitfly cultures, I know petsmart has the small hidey vials, and I used to be a sucker and got them. For 5 bucks and how small the vial is, and how long hideys take to reproduce and cycle, that's a total ripoff. The melanos come in a 32 OZ container, with a screen cap on top. These are okay, and you can make more cultures out of them....but why when you can order them online from someone on here? The ones you find here again are twice as large and have a much higher production, and you can make tons of other cultures (you can do that with the petco one too, but it might take longer as the sizes are smaller) upside for the petco one, is once washed it can be doubled as a mantis enclosure. I could do that with Rebeccau's cultures as well but I would have to order a new top because the culture tops get funky. that's no biggie though.

 

[rs4guy]

Petsmart is gross, I much prefer Petco, but in general I hate the chain stores.....