JaysonDuque83
New Member
I would like to know what everyone's different technique's to keep their crickets alive longer are. Thanks
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The bigger the tub the better. As stated ventilate the top and preferably one or more sides of said tub w/screened holes. I also direct a fan to blow cool air at my tubs since they are in the garage. I place all their food on paper plates to make cleanup easy and quick. If you cleanup all the dead ones and keep the food fresh you shouldnt lose that many. Since I stated using a fan to keep mine cooler I have lost less than half as many. So that may be your problem. Ie too hot or not enough ventilation.
We were ordering 500 at a time for a little while since we have 2 chameleons who were eating like crazy!! The problem was that they were all dying! We had the large cricket keeper (from PetSmart I believe) and I guess that wasn't big enough. Now we order 250 at a time and that seems to be working perfectly. Unless we can find a bigger keeper though, 250 is going to have to be our max!
I would get a rubber container from WalMart twice the size of the cricket keeper. I have found cricket keepers are worthless for more then about 50 as long as you are feeding them off within a couple days. They work better for 1/2" crickets then 3/4". I cut a BIG hole in the top and put screen on it with hot glue. You can also use double sized heavy duty tape, no burns.
I am going to cut out 2 of my sides also because my Florida room gets warm and all they want to do is make eggs and die! This way they will have more ventilation. Oh, btw, I get 2000 a week.
How do you get the crickets out of those bins though? The nice thing about the keeper is it comes with the tubes that you stick in and wait for the crickets to climb up into them. We never have to touch them!
Cardboard tubes...the beauty of it is, you get them all the time...toilet paper tubes, aluminum foil/paper towels/plastic wrap tubes....
I sort of wonder if some of your die off is because you don't leave the tubes in the cricket keeper. It sounds like you put them in just when you need crickets. But crickets need places to hide or things get sad. Try leaving the tubes in the keeper and see if that doesn't up the survival rate.
I use one of those small containers, but it doesn't have the tubes (it was originally bought for something else). I tear up an egg carton (into individual cups) and put those "open side down" on the bottom of the keeper. The crickets hide in the cups. I pick up a cup and shake them into my feeding bag.
I've also used toilet paper tubes. I tear them in half so they fit in my little keeper, but if you have a big bin, that wouldn't be necessary.