Sunday, August 2, 2009

How can I keep a large amount of crickets alive for more than a few weeks?

Ok, so buying crickets in bulk is cheap, like you get 1000 for less than $20. The trouble is, my lizard only eats like 10 a day. So I would need to keep them alive for longer than a few days.

Whenever I buy more than 30 from the petstore, I always get at least 10 that die within a week.

So how can I keep them alive longer?
Answers:
Keeping crickets

1. large deep tupperware or deep rubbermaid container
2. Put lots of air holes in the lid, or cut out a large portion of the lid and use a hot glue gun to glue some fine window screening material to the inside of the lid around the hole.
3. Fill the bottom of the container with a substrate of rolled oats or bran- couple of inches deep. The crickets will eat this.
4. Put one or two small shallow dishes in the bottom of the container - I use the tiny tinfoil pie plates. Fill these dishes with a half potato, a chunk of carrot and if you like a 1/4 to a 1/2 of an orange. Other veggies can be used- they will eat these and get their moisture from them so you may want to also sprinkle the veggies and fruit with calcium and vitamin supplements so that the crickets will be a wonderful healthy meal for your dragon. :)
5. Get several pieces of old egg crate or even old toilet and paper towel rolls, put them in the container- these will be places for the crickets to hide. Its a must if you want the crickets to not fight and eat each other. Also the egg crate etc. can be lifted out of the container when the crickets are in the container and you can just use a piece of the egg crate to shake some crickets either directly into the dragons enclosure, or into a plastic bag to coat them with vitamins and calcium.
6. Now add your crickets to the container- they should be able to stay alive for quite a while when kept this way with proper ventilation.
7. Change the veggies every couple of days- they will go bad and mould- mould and dampness will kill the crickets.

Breeding Crickets

1. You can add a dish of moist soil to the container above- but you must keep the container of soil moist. The crickets will make a mess of this too and soon you will have soil in the oat or bran substrate- creating a breeding ground for moulds etc..
2. You can remove 6 to 10 crickets from the container and put them in another one that has soil that has been dampened in it. The crickets will mate and the females will lay up to 500 eggs each in the damp soil. After a week or so remove the adult crickets from this container (oh you should have been feeding them some veggies or fruit while they were in there too).
3. After the eggs have been laid keep the soil moist.
4. I think it takes about two weeks before you will start to see tiny little crickets emerge from the soil.
5. Make sure to provide food for the young crickets, and you can put some egg crate or toilet paper rolls in the container too for hiding places.
6. About three weeks after the small cricket first emerge they will be about half the size of adult crickets. You may remove them to another container at this time and start the breeding process with some adult crickets again if you like. Anyway- breeding crickets is easy- moist soil is the key. :)
look at how the petstore keeps them alive. usually some egg crate, some water, a little green salad every day, in an aquarium with a light to keep them warm, and screen to keep them in.
Couldnt have answerd better then Carl S
the average cricket lifespan is 2-12 months, depending on the species. the average house cricket only lives about 2.5 months, and by the time you get it from a petshop its already at least a month old.

however, you can help them live longer lives by looking after them better. You can also breed them yourself.

heres a website to help -
http://www.triciaswaterdragon.com/cricke...
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Crickets eat a huge vareity of food such as apples, oranges, bananas, grapes, pears, melon etc. as well as lettuce and cucumber. However i find that they especially like prepacked salad which i get from my local tesco which is a mixture of Frisee, Radicchio and lambs lettuce. It isnt the cheapest, 拢1.29/200g but they love it. I also get alot of apples and mini-gem lettuce too.
Another food they like is premixed food specially for crickets, commonly known as "gut-load" Many people only feed the crickets they intend to feed to their pet (lizard,amphibian,snake or whatever) with gut-load 2 days before however the way i think is that if i want my crickets to breed, i need them to be healthy so i always have a fresh tub of it in the tank.
P.S I just copied this off this website:http://www.crickets.20m.com/feeding.html...
Wooden cage/ screened top is best, then add some paper egg cartons %26/or shredded newspaper along with apple slices or oranges, wet bread things like that... no water dishes ( they fall in %26 drown - their moisture comes from the food ) %26 a clip on lamp with a regular incandescent 60 watt light bulb for warmth, you will have some die no matter what, they don't live long any way, but they will breed %26 fair warning... they get mighty stinky if you don't change the cartons %26 paper about once a week.. especially if you keep them in your house..TC %26 Peace :)

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