Crickets! Please help!

vladdimir26

New Member
For the past 3 months I have been buying about 200-300 crickets at a time until I run out. I have been keeping them on my old baby ball pythons glass tank. They start out great but the majority end up dying. I don't understand why! It's so stressful to feel like I'm throwing away money and cute little bug lives without serving their duties. I provide them with their water, heat pack under the tank, nutritive homemade gut load, and space to hide. But always the majority of them end up dying very fast and I end up with only 80 crickets left! Since it was my second wipe out of crickets today, I decided to throw away the dirt and clean the tank with soap and boiling hot water. My dad and I thought maybe a disease spread from one of the crickets that could have been sick. Please I would like some tips and help with what I should do to at least keep them alive! P.S They are not Wild Caught, they are from Petco, Petsmart, and the last time were from premiumcrickets.com
 
Well, how big is the tank?

Crickets produce a lot of heat and moisture and glass aquariums do not have proper ventilation for crickets. Even with the screen top, the crickets are living in stagnant air. There are some good threads on here on how to keep crickets.

A lot of people use plastic tubs and put screening in the lid and a few sides to get the airflow going. This reduces heat accumulation and provides new air so as no to suffocate the crickets.
 
I have a large plastic storage tub that I have cut outs on the side, bottom and top. This helps with good ventilation. I also have many egg crate sheets in the container so that they crickets do not smother each other. I too take some loss on crickets... but not a whole lot. I stopped have mine delivered to me and buy 1000 at a time. I pull out enough to put into another smaller container with much better veggies and vegetables for the ones I will be feeding in the next 3 days.

As Karma said it would help if we could see your set up for containing them.
 
yep sounds ike not enough ventilations i use a big rubermaid and screened the sides and top the got eggcrates nly thing im getting in the end is the outter skins cant find any dead.
 
the majority of the crickets i get rom petsmart end up dying faster than the ones i get at the reptile show imo. sounds like a ventalation problem like already stated, are you sure its not the shed exoskeletons rather than dead crix?
 
For the past 3 months I have been buying about 200-300 crickets at a time until I run out. I have been keeping them on my old baby ball pythons glass tank. They start out great but the majority end up dying. I don't understand why! It's so stressful to feel like I'm throwing away money and cute little bug lives without serving their duties. I provide them with their water, heat pack under the tank, nutritive homemade gut load, and space to hide. But always the majority of them end up dying very fast and I end up with only 80 crickets left! Since it was my second wipe out of crickets today, I decided to throw away the dirt and clean the tank with soap and boiling hot water. My dad and I thought maybe a disease spread from one of the crickets that could have been sick. Please I would like some tips and help with what I should do to at least keep them alive! P.S They are not Wild Caught, they are from Petco, Petsmart, and the last time were from premiumcrickets.com

When you say dirt, are you using that as a substrate or in a smaller container for breeding? I would say cleanliness with crickets is the biggest thing. When I say that I mean every day cleaning of there water supply and take the dead crickets out. I wouldnt use anything on the bottom of your tank as far as a substrate its easier to clean this way. Crickets are dirty and when youve had a lot of them die in bunches like that your doing the right thing by cleaning it out. Get some egg crates as someone else said and use water gel and cricket crack which you can buy off swiss as diet may be a reason there dying. As for your supply of crickets I get a thousand at a time at 3/4 or I think five weeks old. I am lucky my local pet shop lets me buy 1000 at a time. I dont know who is a good supplier maybe someone else can say but I have to grab a box tomorrow so ill ask who my pet store gets them from I dont think your fish tank is the problem though.
 
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