Insect Room need advise

[Chameleon Mike]

So I'm breeding crickets and dubias and I'm considering making an insect room in the basement. I was wondering what temps would you recommend and what type and size space heater do you have? It would be about a 10x10 room and does have a window for natural light. Any pics of your insect rooms would be helpful as well.

Thanks

 

[jamest0o0]

Here's a bad picture of mine. Heated room in my unfinished basement. Looks like a dungeon lol. Has a window though. Probably about 6x8'. I have a space heater on the ground set at about 72 in the summer and 68 during the winter(to keep electric costs down). Since warm air rises I put my cooler kept insects on the floor and the roaches up higher where it gets to the 80s.

To keep from having to brave the dungeon every morning to feed the chams, I keep a feeder bin of different staple roaches upstairs in the cham room where I load it with high quality dry gutload, fresh veggies, and thawed blended wet cubes of everything. This is nice because I can gutload more precisely. I buy big bags of organic carrots and oranges to feed all the colonies downstairs. It keeps them reproducing and alive while I save money on the expensive gutload only using a little in my feeder bin.

 

[Chameleon Mike]

Here's a bad picture of mine. Heated room in my unfinished basement. Looks like a dungeon lol. Has a window though. Probably about 6x8'. I have a space heater on the ground set at about 72 in the summer and 68 during the winter(to keep electric costs down). Since warm air rises I put my cooler kept insects on the floor and the roaches up higher where it gets to the 80s.

To keep from having to brave the dungeon every morning to feed the chams, I keep a feeder bin of different staple roaches upstairs in the cham room where I load it with high quality dry gutload, fresh veggies, and thawed blended wet cubes of everything. This is nice because I can gutload more precisely. I buy big bags of organic carrots and oranges to feed all the colonies downstairs. It keeps them reproducing and alive while I save money on the expensive gutload only using a little in my feeder bin.

Thanks for the info. Do you bed crickets as well? Do you additional get on the Dubias or do they breed okay at those temps?

 

[jamest0o0]

My dubias breed well at those temps. I have tons. Don't have any crickets atm, but was thinking of trying to breed some in a bioactive setting for the fun of it.

 

[Longhorn1234]

Don't mean to hijack this thread, but let us know how the breeding crickets project go for you!

 

[Chameleon Mike]

Don't mean to hijack this thread, but let us know how the breeding crickets project go for you!

No problem. Its not really hijacking the thread. The cricket breeding went better then expected. These little guys been hatching for a week now and it seems I get about 1,000 per day. This was with 500 adult crickets. I have another hatch due this weekend and that was with 1,000 adults. I'm going to have crickets coming out of my ears.

 

[Chameleon Mike]

This is how I bred them if you're interested.

 

[Longhorn1234]

That's a great video and you are having great luck with them, congrats!

I'm wondering if it would be possible to have a cricket colony in one bin with substrate and cleaning crews, just like James was mentioning

 

[jamest0o0]

@Longhorn1234 I got the idea from someone in the bio community. They had success with it, but not on the scale of a breeding program like mentioned above. I have had small banded cricket colonies reproduce in my enclosures personally. I would expect to get enough to feed off crickets as variety once and awhile, but probably not enough to feed as a full time staple. I'll let you know how things go when I get around to it though.

 

[Longhorn1234]

@jamest0o0 I've read the same thing on different forums that crickets will just start a colony in their pet's enclosure. I think it would be awesome to use for variety. I could envision needing like 15-30 per week so it would be nice to have a small colony going without needing to clean every time and having to put in/take out laying bins. Yeah, let me know how it goes. It would be interesting to see how that works