Cricket Enclosure with screen floor

[LaserGecko]

Hi everyone,

I'm getting ready to make a couple of cricket enclosures for a thousand crickets based on the page at http://www.reptilerooms.com/Sections+index-req-viewarticle-artid-97-page-1.html but had an idea. I just cleaned the Kricket Keeper I've been using and do not look forward to doing that with a thousand of the buggers!

Has anyone ever seen a plastic enclosure with a poop screen on the bottom? It seems to me that it would be a LOT easier to keep the crickets healthy and happy if you could easily get rid of the poop.

If there are any other Good Eats fans on here, imagine a bigger version of the rig he uses to keep fish fresh in the fridge. He uses two nesting plastic shoeboxes with holes in the top one. The top one has holes in the bottom and holds the fish on crushed ice. The water drains off into the bottom box and gets changed when needed.

Would something like this work with crickets? Do you think their legs would get trapped in the screen if it was the majority of the bottom?

I'm thinking a "window pane" style bottom to retain structural integrity would be best.

Any thoughts?

 

[Heika]

Have you seen this design for a cricket keeper? I have never used it, but it sounds similar to what you are looking at doing. http://web.archive.org/web/20060521...com/husbandry/index.php?show=Cricket.Box.html

As suggested in that article, I use an old, not very strong shop vac to suck out sheds, poo, and dead crickets in my cricket boxes, and it works well for me. The suction isn't high enough to suck up crickets that are holding on. I am a bit anal about bug enclosures, and clean them daily.

 

[Smitty]

That is a really good link. My only concern would be the kind of screen being used because crix can eat through some kinds of screen. The link addresses that issue.

Let me know how it goes! I'd be interested to know myself!

 

[LaserGecko]

That's a great link, Heika. I never thought about cricket legs hurting a cham's mouth!

That's pretty close to what I was imagining. I wish it had photos, but I will take some of my construction. One thing about the Kricket Keeper is that those removal tubes are really handy. My wife had no trouble feeding the other day and she would never do it without them, so I'm going to incorporate them into this design, somehow.

 

[LaserGecko]

Cage is done and testing is underway

Well, the cage is done and it has its first inhabitants. I think the heat probably took out about a hundred crickets or so, but I didn't have much time to count them (since I thought I had one more day before the box arrived and it was finished at the last minute).

I took photos and will upload them when I get them resized.

 

[LaserGecko]

Is there a way to embed images from the gallery into these posts or do I need to put them on a server?

In the mean time, I guess I shouldn't have deleted the attachments just quite yet.

Feel free to view the photos in my gallery.

 

[Vegas Chad]

Looks really good!

 

[Ren]

Please let us know how this goes for you , I have been wanting to do the same thing for some time and couldn't figure out the bottom crap catcher, and yet is was a simple idea... nicely done.

 

[LaserGecko]

Well, I don't have the photo handy, but I think this is going to work really well. There was a sizable pile o' poo pellets underneath the eggcrate area today. Of course, I still had to clean out the dead guys (heat from shipping, I suspect) and some various bits and pieces, but if there hadn't been a few live guys in the bottom, I could've just dumped it right in the trash.

Will post the photo when I get home.

Now to figure out where those guys got through.

I am absolutely amazed at how quickly those guys ate the fish food. Wow! Time to find a bulk supplier of that, too.

 

[charly1954]

crickets climb the screened walls

Sorry for posting to an old thread but I searched the net and this thread came up. New to this forum and raising crickets, I like OP's idea but wondering how he'll keep them from jumping or climbing out when he takes the lid off. I lined my container with clear tape so they can't climb far up the sides with screen walls how does that work?