Crickets Dying

Recently I've had difficulty keeping crickets alive. I ordered 2,000 crickets on my last two orders and they have been dying very quickly. I keep them in a large plastic bin with a partial screen top and only 1,000 per bin. I keep several egg crates and a few paper towel roles in each in each container. I feed them assorted vegetables and give them water crystals. less than a week after getting the 1" crickets a ton of them died and the inside of the containers seemed very moist. I disposed of the dead crickets, cleaned the containers out and put all crickets that were still alive back into the containers. Does anyone know what I may be doing wrong?

You need more ventilation. If it felt moist that means the humidity was really high, and humidity kills crickets (and makes the stink even worse!) so that's probably your problem. You'll need to either use a much larger container, put them someplace cooler with better airflow, or cut out the sides and put screen there too. Modifying the sides for better air flow is your best bet and probably the most worry-free solution. With better ventilation you don't have to worry about the external environment as much. Here's my bin:



It's not a very big bin and I keep 600+ nearly 1" crickets in there with hardly any die offs at all. The key is good ventilation and hydration. It sounds like you have hydration covered so you need to address the airflow. They also needs lots of egg crates to hide in. Overcrowding causes deaths as well. My bin is small so there are 3 egg crates and 3 paper towel rolls in there and it works well for my numbers. Any more crickets and I'd need to add more things for them to crawl on so you might want to try that as well. How warm are you keeping them? Keeper them cooler helps keep them alive longer in my experience. Also keeps them from growing so fast. Good luck!

hmm... Are you making sure to dry the container really well?? Just once i had that happen where i didn't dry it well enough and two days later fully sporangia[ted] mold appeared!!.. my only suggestion. GL

Thanks guys...I will try more ventilation. I am hoping that may just do the trick because I only have about a 4'x6" screen on the top...the rest is plastic. I already keep them in a cool room and make sure the container is dry before I put them in there.