Feeders are too big for my Panther baby!

[mswilly]

I went and picked up my 2.5 month old male nosy be panther chameleon 2 days ago, and I bought what are supposed to be the 1/8 inch crickets for him from my breeder. I got the crickets home (I live 2 hours away from my breeder) and they look way to big for him! Some of them are adult crickets! I don't want to feed him the huge ones, there are a few smaller ones in there, but is there a way i can sort the smaller guys from the adults until I can run to my local pet store and get him some smaller feeders?

Thanks!

 

[chameleonkev]

The adult crickets will probly kill him if they take a bite, I'd fish out the really small ones an get to the pet shop soon as possible get some small crics and fruit flies

 

[AllFallDown]

I went and picked up my 2.5 month old male nosy be panther chameleon 2 days ago, and I bought what are supposed to be the 1/8 inch crickets for him from my breeder. I got the crickets home (I live 2 hours away from my breeder) and they look way to big for him! Some of them are adult crickets! I don't want to feed him the huge ones, there are a few smaller ones in there, but is there a way i can sort the smaller guys from the adults until I can run to my local pet store and get him some smaller feeders?

Thanks!

Yeah... I would have been pretty ticked off by that.... Oh well, accidents happen. Might be worth ordering a bunch of pinheads (or size of your choice) online.

 

[mswilly]

Yeah, I wasn't the happiest of campers....is there a method of sorting them without having 20 of them escape? I have them in a home made cricket keeper made out of a Rubbermaid container.

 

[AllFallDown]

Yeah, I wasn't the happiest of campers....is there a method of sorting them without having 20 of them escape? I have them in a home made cricket keeper made out of a Rubbermaid container.

How many are we talking here? Too many to just pick out the big ones?
I cant think of a specific method besides perhaps getting a funnel and trying to use it as a sieve in a way. Dont know how well that would work.

 

[AllFallDown]

Actually..... here is a long shot

I suspect that the larger ones can jump higher and farther than the smaller ones. Put everything in a large rubbermade tote. Create some kind of physical obstical, like a stack of books in side, which divides the tote into two sections (better do this before adding the crix). Make sure the barrier is low enough to where the larger crix can jump over it but the smaller ones cannot. Then, try encouraging the crickets to try to jump over by sweeping them toward the obstical. When they jump on top, push them to the other side of the division.

I have no idea if this would actually work but it is what popped into my head just now.

If you try it, I want the technique named after me!

(Note: crickets are going to have a range of jumping capacities. Idea here is to broadly separate them out.)

 

[joemacchirella]

Yeah, I wasn't the happiest of campers....is there a method of sorting them without having 20 of them escape? I have them in a home made cricket keeper made out of a Rubbermaid container.

what i do is put the cricket tub inside the bathtub and clean out my bins so if any escape u could just pick them up and put them back in the bin you could use this technique to sort

 

[CHScrusader]

Petco sells small crickets and small/mini mealworms. Go there until your Cham gets large enough. If you're going to mainly feed it worms, make sure you dust them with a calcium Atleast once a week for some nutrition.

 

[mswilly]

We don't have Petco in Canada as far as I know We have Petsmart, and I used to go there for my crickets, but it's the same thing. They're small crickets are mixed in with their larger crickets and they don't really sort them out for you! So frustrating. My local pet store here in town has some so I usually buy from them.

 

[pssh]

Try drilling some small holes in a small bin so that only the smaller crickets can fit theough the holes. Put this bin in a larger one and raise it a little so tha small crickets can climb down the holes into the bigger bin while the larger ones stay in the smaller bin.

Use a plain calcium without D3 at almost every feeding (not just once a week!) make sure you have all the supplements you need and gutload the crickets really well.

 

[mswilly]

pssh, that's a fantastic idea actually! Although I do dust my crickets everyday with plain calcium already.....d3 twice a month.

 

[pssh]

Alright, just checking!