cricket troubles

ok, i've been trying to breed crickets latley but there seems to be a wierd problem with a few of 'em, and I think it may be due to something i've fed them, somthing with pesticides in it. (I think it was the cellary)

some of them seem to be..." nearing the end " they have lost use of some of thier legs, mostly thier jumping legs, and will only move a little bit of you really poke them about, and they seem to be shakey. and titchy... anyway I through the wierd ones out, the rest of them seem to be ok. and I don't think it's due to age because some of the ones affected aren't even subadults yet.

That sounds like the typical cricket to me. I suggest roaches

they only sell crickets around where I live. I could try gettin some of the web but... I dunno.


are they that easy to breed?

Put it this way I have a 10 gallon tank in my garage that had about 5 hissers that I completly forgot about since december. And as of today i have 2 adults and a ton of babies random sizes. As for the ones im actually TRYING to breed they are doing great with so far zero deaths and more babies than my bearded dragon can eat.

cool, i've seen a "starter colony of 100 adults " on virgina cheeseman.

Mister Internet a Admin at Arachnoboards has a ready made colony for sale. Under 200 bucks and no waiting for breeding. BTW i'm moving this to the feeder sections

cool, does he do international?

btw what spp. are they?

B. dubia...i'm not sure you can ask and tell him i sent you....might cut you a better deal...who knows.

Hmmmm..... I think i'll leave it. i'm a little short of £200.

I was gonna say if your short on money he also sells adult roaches. Best thing to do is get your self 1.3 (ratio) and let them do their thing for a few months. I was short on money to so I invested 100 dollars into buying a ton of adults and left them alone for a while only feeding them once a week. Check out blaberus.com James has some quality roaches to and you can get yourself some "starter" colonies but you just have to give them time to breed.

try here http://www.roachshop.co.uk/

A very easy low maintained cricket breeding installation:

1 BIG petbox.
2. A few egg cartoons.
3. Dog, cat or chicken food.
4. A couple of small plastic boxes filled with peat.
5. A second petbox, cover the top with fine (smaller than the pinheads) mesh.
6. Heatmat (Not necessary, but speeds up the process)

A. Fill the bottom of the biggest petbox with the animal food. Place the egg cartoons in one side if the enclosure.

B. Soak the peat in the little plastic box and place it on the other side of the petbox.

C. Add the crickets to the petbox.

D. Every 2-3 day, spray the peat in the little box if it is dry. Make sure to not soak it this time.

D. After about a couple of weeks (if you have adult male and female crickets in you petbox) change the little plastic box with a new box.(remember to soak the peat.) Place the box from the petbox in your other petbox, place the heat mat underneath. Make sure to always keep the peat moist.

It works for me, but I did not use the fine mesh, so I had to quit breeding them since my fince wanted to kill me each time there was pinheads running around in our apartment.

Regards
Robin

only problem i see with your set uo is using the dog food, crickets fed on dog food ar not best if they will be fed to lizards, something to do with fat and protein, renal failure and fatty liver disease blah blah blah

Robin;
Do you have pics of the set-up that you used?

thanks guys. Roachshop looks good, graham, I might try that out.


Robin, I just got a big plastic bread-bin type thing, I'll use that.

My crickets seemed to be thriving. I've had mine establish for several months. Mine is as simple as it gets. I have a rubbermaid container with egg cartons on one side stacked vertically. On the other side I have two deli cup lids, one with my cricket mix and the other with cricket quencher. I put a small deli cup in there filled with moist cocofiber and like Robin said just make sure the cocofiber stays moist. After a couple days, I put the container into a smaller rubbermaid and wait around a week or so for the little ones to hatch.

The only issue I had was when I was using some fruit crates I bought off of Arachnoboards. Apparently they had some sort of insecticide in them. I was losing about a dozen or so a day. You also need to remember for adult you need excellent ventilations to keep them healthy.

okay, I'll keep that in mind. I think ventilation may be one of the problems...

i'lll borrow a drill and put a good coupla holes in the lid and sides, or mabye cut out a big hole and cover it with thingy.... that mesh stuff.

i wouldnt use a drill for the holes they can squeeze outta them pretty easily lol
try just pushing a nail through

naw i'm gonna use a pretty tiny drill, you can snap it with your hand if you try hard enough.

That probably won't be good enough. I had several holes on the side and I was having a lot of casualities. I ended up cutting a large hole in the top almost the size of the lid and hotgluing metal mesh to the underside. I have been quiet successful with breeding crickets so far and I just had about 2000 hatch in the last couple days and still going. I'll take pics if you like.

that would be great athlon, thank you.

No prob. I should be able to snap some here soon. Here are some distance shots I took a while back. I've change the internal setup a little but toilet paper rolls are still the way to go for babies, with a couple pieces of egg creates.

Here are some more photos. I had to take them with my iPhone so sorry about the quality.

Pinhead setup w/ a couple pinheads


Top to the pinhead setup. I usually cover this with seran wrap.


Adult setup


Top to adult setup


Bottom of the lid

lycanlord19 wrote:

only problem i see with your set uo is using the dog food, crickets fed on dog food ar not best if they will be fed to lizards, something to do with fat and protein, renal failure and fatty liver disease blah blah blah

Ok, that might be true. I use only some expensive cat food to mine, and only feed them to invertebrates, but useful information anyhow. Thanks

wburke17 wrote:

Robin;
Do you have pics of the set-up that you used?

No, but I still have the setup, so I can try to remeber taking a couple when I get home.

Regards
Robin

thanks athlon, i'll try to get some mesh at B&Q sometime, if they sell it,which they should.


thanks for the pics and info.