Cricket basic questions for vacation

[suprdude]

I'm going to be gone a vacation for 10 days. My enclosure if fully automated except for food. My temporary solution is to let a bunch of crickets loose in my chameleon's enclosure. But I've never done crickets. My guy usually eats dubia's and some BSF's but since they don't move much, he often ignores them unless I'm feeding him by hand. I will stock the enclosure with dubia's in cups while I'm gone, but I need a backup of crickets. Someone will be checking on him to make sure the misters/lights/fans are working, but I can't find anybody that will handle bugs . Since I've never had crickets before, here are a few of my questions:

1. Do they jump around/move much? I know chameleons are drawn to movement.

2. If I throw 30 crickets in there and come back with a bunch uneaten, am I going to hear chirping for another 2 months until they die of old age?

3. My lights are sitting on top of 1/2 in. Gauge Galvanized Steel shelf (see pic). I plan on getting 3/4 inch crickets; what are the odds that they're going to try to escape? If they do squeeze through, it would be a dead end because it's fully enclosed in the light box.

 

[Pearl Fields]

I don't exactly know how to answer some of your questions, but just speaking from experience, the crickets I've gotten tended to die pretty fast, like within a few days, and get pretty nasty. Mine were from the pet store though, so maybe crickets from better sources would be different? Also, when I've put individual crickets onto a branch so my chameleon could hunt a bit (I just did it one by one so they wouldnt all go out in my room) I am fairly sure that one of them landed on my chameleon and was trying to nibble on him, so I'd be wary of setting loose a bunch of crickets, but then again I could be wrong, just my experience.

Also, those holes look like 3/4 inch crickets could definitely escape to me, cuz the crickets are not usually that wide I think.

 

[suprdude]

Thanks for sharing

 

[MissSkittles]

I would be hesitant to do that with crickets. He will probably eat all he can within the first day or two and then there is always the risk of the crickets biting him at night. It would be much better to get some small cups with lids and put some dubia and a bit of food for them inside and maybe even just a scant few grains of calcium. Whoever it is checking on him only need to remove the lid and place in the enclosure or his feeding station. This is what others have done and it’s worked for them.