Breeding crickets bioactively

[jamest0o0]

I just heard of someone doing this and never thought about it. This would control the smell and be self-cleaning. Thoughts?

 

[nightanole]

How does one "one bin" breeding crickets? You cant just have the entire colony in one bin like dubia and meal worms.

As for smell and self cleaning, well you will always have the smell as long as you have poop. They dont produce edible poop like dubia and mealworms. The babies do not eat the adult poop.

 

[jamest0o0]

This person does it with success. I'll try and get some pictures. I wouldn't think the babies eat the adult poop, but springtails, isopods, cleaner beetles, etc most likely would. I've had max 500 crickets at a time and even without cleaning them I never get a smell from bandeds. I don't have an operation that requires thousands of crickets a week so I was thinking the CuC could handle it. If you had a large bin with a ton of custodians, couldn't it be possible to have a small scale self cleaning/reproducing bin.

 

[nightanole]

Yea its possible.
You would need something that could recycle:
Dead crickets, lots of dead crickets
Cricket sheds
cricket poop
Not eat eggs for freshly shed babies
Rotten food the crickets wont eat

If you can find a cleaner crew that can handle recycling the above, you are gold. I would stay step 1 would be to get some "mini mealworms".

 

[jamest0o0]

I have those in most of my bins, the person I saw used dermestids, but those things terrify me. Think adding superworms would be problematic? I know they can be voracious and have strong bites. It wouldn't hurt to experiment with this, for small collections I think it could be a decent way to keep a cricket supply going for longer.

Thanks for replying, I know a lot of people don't like to touch these bio posts lol.

 

[nightanole]

I have those in most of my bins, the person I saw used dermestids, but those things terrify me. Think adding superworms would be problematic? I know they can be voracious and have strong bites. It wouldn't hurt to experiment with this, for small collections I think it could be a decent way to keep a cricket supply going for longer.

Thanks for replying, I know a lot of people don't like to touch these bio posts lol.

Supers eat baby everythings, including baby supers. Infact my supers ate all my dermestids...

 

[jamest0o0]

Got it, no supers lol