Cricket Container Question

[Porky1961]

Hello All,
I am keeping my feeder crickets in a 10 gallon aquarium. I am looking for advice to provide easier cleaning of the aquarium. I read somewhere that if you put a layer of sand in the bottom of the aquarium that it helps because you can scoop up the dead ones in a strainer and sift the sand back into the tank and then throw the dead ones that are left in the strainer in the garbage. I do not have any kind of substrate in the bottom of my tank and it is a real pain trying to sort the dead ones from the living ones while I am starting to clean their tank. Any helpfull suggestions will be appreciated.

MARK

 

[Brad Ramsey]

Sand or any substrate would make it harder to clean in my opinion. Cleaning the cricket enclosure is just a pain regardless of what you do.
Keeping them in a rubbermaid container makes it easier for me because it weighs less and you can tip the live crickets into another container then clean.
Most of them get lifted out on the eggcrate pieces but there are always those that are left in the bottom. I'm not sure there is a really easy way to do it.

-Brad

 

[Robzob]

What I've found to work fairly well for removing dead/dying crickets is to make one end (roughly a quarter) of the crickets container darker than the other. I put the container (a plastic "Kritter Keeper") on the ground and put two black shoes I had laying around at one end of the container (outside the container of course)..I also took out everything inside (the egg crate & food)...all the remaining crickets headed toward the end of the container where the shoes were..probably thinking they could hide there. I scooped up the dead crickets with a little piece of folded cardboard and that was it.

So basically if you keep one end of the tank barren and lit and the other darker with a potential hiding spot, the barren side will be where you can scoot all the dead ones to and clean up.

 

[MWheelock]

I take out all furniture (egg crates) and food bowls and tilt the aquarium to a 45 degree angle. Everything shifts to one end. Then I sit it normal. I replace the furniture to the other end and shoo the crickets to the other side. Then I clean up the dirty end with a note card, allowing any stragglers to jump off.

I agree that sand would make cleaning much harder.

I find if I put a heat lamp over the clean side and come back in 20 minutes, most of the crickets have moved back to that side of the cage.

Matthew

 

[Mikew2006]

what about one of these? i remember using one when i was at school.
http://wildaboutnature.shop121.co.uk/product_images/fullsize/pooter.jpg

 

[jleahl]

Mike, what would you use that for?

I put oatmeal in the bottom of my cricket container. I try to clean out dead crickets every so often, and oatmeal is pretty cheap, so if I scoop some out with the dead guys it's no biggie. I replace all of it when I get a new batch of crickets. It's fortified, so besides making the cage easier to clean (the cricket poop doesn't stick to the bottom of the critter keeper), it won't hurt them any to eat it, too! In fact, when I put in a new batch, there are always some that immediately grab a flake and carry it off or start munching...Only trick is, put the gutload (esp wet) on something plastic (I use an old lid of a jar or something), so that it doesn't touch the oatmeal directly, 'cause it will mold.

 

[Heika]

I use a shop vac in my cricket boxes. I keep an old one around just for it, because the suction isn't that great. It lifts out the dead crickets and poo, but the live ones hold on tight. I recently bought a new one, and discovered it had wayy too much suction to be of much use for this task... The new shop vac does a really amazing job of cleaning out cage bottoms, though.

Heika