Hey! Does your crick bin stink??

Psychobunny

Avid Member
Lots of ppl complaining about crick bin stink!!
I know the feeling :(

Most common reasons 4 bin stink R;

A) poor ventilation.

Use a oversize plastic tub if you are keeping hundreds of cricks and cut out
the lid and hot glue a big piece of screen on it.
You need good ventilation and avoid too much heat.

B) dead crickets.

Dead crick STINK and release gas as they decompose, which is made even
worse when the deceased gets nibbled on!!!
Make sure to check your bin every day for gonners, dead'uns, corpus stelecti, past aways, kicked the buckets, cold meats, croakers, deceased, and / or dead cricks :D


C) Filth.

Clean the bloody bin!! change those nasty poop crusted egg cartons!!!


D) Feeding.

Have you ever heard; 'you are what you eat?", well, I don't know if that's true, but I do know you POOP what you eat!!

If you feed your cricks mostly high moisture food; bug burger, veggies and fruits, and little or no dry food, like Cricket Crack, then, guess what!?
you will have wet stinky poop everywhere!!

Unless you want to completely clean; that is, change the egg cartons, remove the cricks and scrub the tub with hot soapy water, about every other day (depending on how many of these degusting little creatures you have in there) then you NEED to balance the wet food with the dry in equal amounts. If your cricks eat only the dry stuff when given the choice, cut back, etc. Their diet should be balanced.
Think of it this way; supposing YOU ate nothing but kale, mustard greens, apples and Bug Burger for a few weeks!!??
Yep, that's what will happen alright, only difference is, you can flush!!



E) Parasitic Disease.


Nothing is more foul, loathsome, rude, and plain old fu**ed up then some moron sending you 1500 cricks with some horrible, deadly parasite!!!
If you notice a major DIE-OFF overnight, or most are dead in shipment, and it's only been 75F, and there is no other reason for it, DESTROY everything!! the dead and live cricks, the box and packing, the Supplier, the Supplier's children!! (joke there!!ha!!).
If you had them in your bin, just clean really well with hot, soapy water with a little bleach (the bin I mean, NOT the cricks!!)

Look, I don't like crickets any more then you do, but nearly ALL pet reptiles LOVE them, and they are excellent gut-load vehicles because they will eat, and sometimes pig-out, on anything!!
So, lets all just learn to live with these nasty little buggers without the stench!!
L8er
 
Good post! I agree with your suggestions.

I like to use crushed walnut shells as substrate, which makes my bin easy to clean out. It's helpful for me to keep a sifting scoop nearby & frequently sift out dead crickets & expired veggies.

A clean bin = crickets that live longer = less $ spent
 
Great thread. I have a lot of dart frogs and need small crickets, so I buy a couple hundred adult crickets and put them in large bins with about a 3-inch layer of damp coco fiber mixed with a little charcoal (to help with odor control). They will lay eggs in the substrate. I feed the larger crickets to my chams and other critters. A few weeks later, the bins are crawling with pinheads. It's a good way to get true pinhead crickets (which are the size of melanogaster ffs) and get more bang for your buck.

The substrate seems to help with the odor if it's ventilated. Ventilation is absolutely critical. Ammonia build up can wipe out the entire colony. Once the pinheads have hatched, I move them to a clean bin and bleach out the used bin. If you want to get pinheads to hatch, you do have to occasionally mist the substrate because proper ventilation will dry out the substrate. But, don't mist the cardboard eggcrate material. That will promote mold and more odor. Also, don't reuse the eggcrate if you want to house them in this matter. It absorbs all kinds of nasty stuff.

It's not a perfect system, but it seems to work out pretty well and saves me a few bucks.
 
Great post Stan, and really funny, but I don't worry about it,that is my husbands job and he keeps the cricket cage out in his work room off the garage, I don't even go out there unless he is not home and I have to get Picasso some crickets.....but I don't really ever smell anything bad coming from that room, so I guess he keeps the cricket cage clean.
 
Bravo for him, he's a brave man :D
Lot's of guys will just take the lid off.... peeeuuuuwwww! and think; 'what if I just hang about 10 of those car mirror, hangy, smell good, thingies in here??

Lots of guyz don't want to touch them!!

Right now, mine is right in the dinning room!! :eek:
 
Is this true I have heard is and don't know if its true when a cricket does it releases a gas? This gas kills the other crickets in the bin. I was told this by one of the cricket dealers at the reptile show. It would make sense to me when there are a couple dead and you leave them in there the next day there are a lot more dead..... Anyone heard this
 
I use giant tubes in mine it never stinks I swap everything put weekly. The tubes I use are 4 times the size of paper towel rolls. Last month I had no dead guys
 
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I haven't heard that they release a specific type of gas upon death, but if there is any moisture at all they quickly decompose and, along with decomposition of waste products, produce a significant amount of ammonia, which is deadly. If you smell any ammonia at all, it's time to clean out the enclosure and give it more ventilation.

Is this true I have heard is and don't know if its true when a cricket does it releases a gas? This gas kills the other crickets in the bin. I was told this by one of the cricket dealers at the reptile show. It would make sense to me when there are a couple dead and you leave them in there the next day there are a lot more dead..... Anyone heard this
 
Is this true I have heard is and don't know if its true when a cricket does it releases a gas? This gas kills the other crickets in the bin. I was told this by one of the cricket dealers at the reptile show. It would make sense to me when there are a couple dead and you leave them in there the next day there are a lot more dead..... Anyone heard this

I was also told this because it kept happening to me so I started cleaning my bin a lot more and never had a problem after that.
 
I was also told this because it kept happening to me so I started cleaning my bin a lot more and never had a problem after that.

Yea It was actually referred to as the secret of cricket keeping when he told me haha yea biggest problem is so many molts on the bottom of the bin but they don't smell
 
I found the dirty jobs episode were they go to the cricket farm very helpful also it's on Netflix
 
Thanks everyone, I have had to keep these stupid things since I had my first lizards back in the late 1970's :eek: :eek:

I remember having to buy hunting magazines and clip out the adds to write a check and mail it in for an order of cricks. Or I would have to drive into the city where there was the one and only pet store that sold cricks!!
Way before the internet, or even PC's in home use.

So you might say, I am used to them (crickets I mean) ;)
 
Thanks everyone, I have had to keep these stupid things since I had my first lizards back in the late 1970's :eek: :eek:

I remember having to buy hunting magazines and clip out the adds to write a check and mail it in for an order of cricks. Or I would have to drive into the city where there was the one and only pet store that sold cricks!!
Way before the internet, or even PC's in home use.

So you might say, I am used to them (crickets I mean) ;)

That's crazy about the hunting magazines
 
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