High cricket mortality rate

seanUTD

New Member
So I bought 200 crickets 3 weeks ago and I had looked up many different breeding and keeping strategies... My enclosure for them has plenty of walking room... Plenty of gut loading food ( either potato, greens with a smaller amount of dried cricket feed) and I use the water crystals to avoid drowning... But my crickets have been dying at a massive rate and I can't figure out why? Has anybody found a similar problem with store bought crickets?
 
I have two non-bigname petstores by me that sell crickets. One has "large" crickets that are all pretty much small/medium who are half dead by the end of the first day.

Another store has crickets that I once bought at an ACTUAL large size and kept alive for five weeks in a storage container with little ventilation (I always thought crickets were really hard to kill and didn't realize the importance of having loads of ventilation for them). I swear, less than ten total out of 100 died over five weeks being kept in very "wrong" conditions for crickets, although they were well gutloaded.

The others die if I look at them the wrong way.

Some stores just have some really crappy crickets I think.
 
The past 6 month there has been a criket illness that is nation wide!! make sure you santise your cricket keeper/container before you restock. 3 weeks ago i got a 1000ct box 0nly 300 made it to the chameleons. the good new is it wont affect your chameleons health.
 
I have them in a deep rubbermaid container with a very large (1'x8") hole cut with mesh for ventilation.. I keep the container in a closet which stays around 80 degrees... I change the perishable food every 2 days... clean and change the egg crates weekly
 
When a cricket dies it releases a chemical that is toxic to other crickets and kills them almost immediately. If you remove the dead bodies of the crickets as soon as possible it helps to prevent the rest of the crickets from dying.
 
I have 4 sides with screen mesh and the lid also. That provides enough ventilation. I buy around 150 crickets at a time at my local pet store and dont lose any this way.
 
The trick it to keep them as dry as possible. But you still have to provide water, I like to use water crystals.
 
I think I found the culprit this morning... I found tiny ants leaving the container and I take the bodies out ASAP but I'm always surprised to find them eaten out leaving only the exos and the ants definitely give me an idea of whats going on
 
I bought 1.000 medium sized crickets some months ago in order to start a breeding colony.All of them died because of an ilness.The only thing i know is that they didn't die because of me.Since then a bought some more and i didn't have such a massive loss.It is very important to remove the dead ones right away and you should also keep them as dry as you can.Dubias cannot replace crickets because they reproduce slowly and because they ar not a very attractive prey for chameleons but they don't want so much attention.If you can spend some time for your cricket colony it is sure that you will produce tones of them!:)
 
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