What I learned about keeping crickets

[jajeanpierre]

Yesterday while placing an order for crickets with my regular supplier, Ghann's Crickets (a Chameleon Forum sponsor), I spoke to the plant manager about how to improve my cricket-keeping husbandry.

I keep crickets a week before I start feeding them to the chameleons. Although they don't die, they are often not as vigorous as they were when I took them out of the box.

His first suggestion was better hydration. I had been hydrating them by feeding them washed greens or fruit. Ghanns uses this type of waterer and put paper towels in the bottom to wick up all the water and prevent the crickets from drowning.

http://www.backyardchickens.com/products/1-gallon-poultry-waterer

He told me to never use the cubes for hydration. They are so effective pulling water into them that they will actually dehydrate the crickets. I think we all "knew" the hydration cubes were bad, but never knew why.

 

[OldChamKeeper]

I've had zero issues with hydration gel, which I think is the same thing you mentioned. I keep Crickets, two types of roaches and superworms (which I don't like) all using this method of hydration. Minimal losses for crickets, roaches zero, same with the supers. I'd have to disagree with you on this if we are talking about the same stuff.

 

[Blang]

Yesterday while placing an order for crickets with my regular supplier, Ghann's Crickets (a Chameleon Forum sponsor), I spoke to the plant manager about how to improve my cricket-keeping husbandry.

I keep crickets a week before I start feeding them to the chameleons. Although they don't die, they are often not as vigorous as they were when I took them out of the box.

His first suggestion was better hydration. I had been hydrating them by feeding them washed greens or fruit. Ghanns uses this type of waterer and put paper towels in the bottom to wick up all the water and prevent the crickets from drowning.

http://www.backyardchickens.com/products/1-gallon-poultry-waterer

He told me to never use the cubes for hydration. They are so effective pulling water into them that they will actually dehydrate the crickets. I think we all "knew" the hydration cubes were bad, but never knew why.

You can also wash the dust off of aquarium gravel & put that in instead of the paper toweling! The crickets can walk on the wet stones & drink & won't drowned

 

[maryanne27]

You can also wash the dust off of aquarium gravel & put that in instead of the paper toweling! The crickets can walk on the wet stones & drink & won't drowned

Would this also be recommended for keeping in a Dubia colony? I'm going to start one and would appreciate the advice!

 

[Blang]

Would this also be recommended for keeping in a Dubia colony? I'm going to start one and would appreciate the advice!

I would think so! I would buy a noodle strainer & when you need to clean the cricket poop/dubia poop off the stones pour the stones into your strainer & rinse under your faucet in hot water! Keep strainer separate from your regular kitchen utinsels!

 

[kinyonga]

For years I would buy 1000 crickets at a time and feed them with the greens and veggies I have listed on here for years. I never provided a separate water source. They got whatever beads of water were on the greens and what they got from the greens and veggies themselves. In several of my lizards and tortoise cages there were crickets reproducing for generations in he cages...fed the same greens and veggies the tortoises got. They never seemed to lose their vigor and I never found more than a few dead ones.

I kept the 1000 split up in several large plastic pet keepers with layers of egg cartons piled in the containers. They were kept at room temperature (about 72f).

This doesn't mean that this is the only way to do it....just telling you what worked for me.

 

[maryanne27]

I would think so! I would buy a noodle strainer & when you need to clean the cricket poop/dubia poop off the stones pour the stones into your strainer & rinse under your faucet in hot water! Keep strainer separate from your regular kitchen utinsels!

That sounds great! Thanks so much

 

[jajeanpierre]

For years I would buy 1000 crickets at a time and feed them with the greens and veggies I have listed on here for years. I never provided a separate water source. They got whatever beads of water were on the greens and what they got from the greens and veggies themselves. In several of my lizards and tortoise cages there were crickets reproducing for generations in he cages...fed the same greens and veggies the tortoises got. They never seemed to lose their vigor and I never found more than a few dead ones.

I kept the 1000 split up in several large plastic pet keepers with layers of egg cartons piled in the containers. They were kept at room temperature (about 72f).

This doesn't mean that this is the only way to do it....just telling you what worked for me.

That's how I was keeping them, expecting them to hydrate with the greens. That was the first thing he suggested with my husbandry--give them access to more water. Plus never feed the cubes (even though they sell them).

 

[Nicholasdeaan]

I bought 100 crickets two weeks ago, out of the whole group 4 died. They lived close to two weeks. I never use a water dish or anything. Only Greene like kale and etc. They're so stupid and love drowning themselves.

 

[MissLissa]

For my stick bugs and crickets I use Petri dishes filled with marbles, then fill with water. It's easy to clean, prevents drowning, and if I get a new shipment of crickets in (mostly I breed my own) they drink and drink and drink. Often I have to refill it several times a day for the first few days. I find the crickets stand on the hydro gel and poop all over it, making the cubes pretty foul pretty quickly and the bugs stop using them just as quickly. Fair enough; I wouldn't want to eat cricket-poop-gel, either.

My supers and mealworms (not for the cham, they are for other critters) get veggies as their water source and do just fine with that alone... Sometimes too fine, and I end up feeding some overstock off to the bluebirds outside!

 

[chamsarecool]

I would stay away from water crystals, they have been implicated in numerous lizard deaths. No telling how many where they were the undiscovered cause.