Crickets Are Nasty

[JoshD49]

So my first round of crickets I purchased about 150 or so to get my guy through his first couple weeks. I have a lot of them still alive even though the guy at the store said he would be surprised if they survived a week. Little did he know that I'm a member here and have done my HW on setting up a cricket keeper. The problem is that my Cham only recently started really getting an appetite and now eat about 6 crickets and 5 Dubia a day. This means I have a lot more crickets then expected and the cage is nasty dirty. I know this is normal and all and I see that people don't clean the bins out for a week or so at a time. Won't this cause issues since there is so much poo in there? I don't have time to do more then once a week but want to make sure it won't be an issue.

Another question is I would like to get a pair of gloves to deal with this issue as well as hand feeding. Is there any materials to avoid?

I would do away with crickets all together and go Dubia but I'm just too scared of infestation. I know people say it can't happen but right now in California it's well over 90 degrees. I keep the house at 74 but I store the feeders in the garage and with nothing heating them they are doing just fine so I could see that happening in the garage if they escape as well.

Thanks guys and sorry for the long read.

 

[JacksJill]

Yes! they are.
There are some cleaner insects that can help with the bin but good ventilation and cleaning the poo out on a regular basis are what work for me.

 

[NickTide]

Never heard of dubias infesting anywhere. They like to bury in leaf litter etc.

 

[Arpretty]

I think I would go crazy with that many crickets at this point, lol. I max out around 50 per purchase. I clean out their poop and the dead ones every 2-3 days, refill their water packets, wipe out the food bowl, and dispose of any yucky or no-good food. This system works well for me and I don’t have a huge amount of casualties. I feel like it keeps them cleaner and healthier overall for my Cham. I save all my egg cartons/TP/paper towel cardboard at home so I have plenty to rotate if that gets gross too. Also - I use a paint scraper to scrape the poop and dead crix to one side, and lift it all out with the scraper. Makes life easier for me & cleaning is nice and quick.

I use a glass reptile tank with a screen top. I think this helps with the ventilation.

 

[ToxiccKiwii]

Ohhhh man, you'd HATE my cricket supply then, I have anywhere from 500-1000 in one of my spare 15 gallon tank.... two bowls of cricket food, and four of the black tubes from my old cricket keeper.

We go through them every few weeks 'cause there's 3 geckos, and .. well, was three, but now two red-eyed skinks that eat them besides my Cham. So we clean it out before we get more, and it is NASTY, smells like sweaty gym undies even in such a short amount of time.

We also use our old XL cricket keeper for our Dubia now, with the tubes taken out, of course, there's about 150 in there with food / water sponge...

To each their own though, I HATED crickets at first but, it's gotten better now that there's a rhythm to it

 

[JoshD49]

I thought it was a lot but the guy at the store said it's what I need and since I read that juvinile chams can eat 10 a day plus I knew I would lose some I didn't really question it. I will not be buying that many next time.

 

[insectovore]

Crickets are all about the condition you receive them in and how you keep them. I keep mine in plastic tubs with screen ventilation and sufficient egg crates and I very rarely have many dead in any bin unless its really big and old crickets. They always have access to moisture but their cages are never overly humid and certainly never moist (that's an excellent way to have a mass die off). Dubia will not infest your house, they reproduce pretty slowly to be honest and would have a terrible time ever creating an infestation. If you have many reptiles you will struggle to produce enough dubia to feed them, much less have to worry about your house being taken over. I really like them as a feeder but there's way no I could ever get enough to replace my other roaches and crickets that make up a significant portion of what I feed.

 

[JoshD49]

Well I only have the one Cham and maybe I will get a second one in a year or so. I have no other reptiles besides the wild ones in my back yard including an 8 in southern alligator lizzard that lives out there. Dude is massive and freaks my wife out. I will need to catch him and move him somewhere soon except I did that before and it came back in a few days. Crazy it found it's way back. If I still had a frewater tank with Oscars no problem but I only have my reef tank and they are not going to eat bugs haha .

 

[Wowbango]

Yeah I usually order them 500-1000 at a time. two feed 2 chameleons and 2 geckos, I tend to order them smaller than what I need them so I don't end up with a bunch of adults at the end of their life cycle. Cleaning is unfortunately that....cleaning. it's a mess, they stink, but my chameleons won't take to roaches, and can't keep feeding them superworms etc...so what can you do? But I try to clean at least every other day in the container I have them in. Definitely keep any egg cartons/paper towel/toilet rolls and swap them out somewhat frequently. They get soggy and gross with poop/pee after a while. The Paint scraper is a must and makes cleaning a lot easier!

 

[Chameleophlaged]

Ohhhh man, you'd HATE my cricket supply then, I have anywhere from 500-1000 in one of my spare 15 gallon tank.... two bowls of cricket food, and four of the black tubes from my old cricket keeper.

If you hate @ToxiccKiwii's supply, mine is truly scary. I buy 20K every 5 or 6 days (depending on where weekends fall)

I used to have massive die-offs, mostly due to the moisture created by so many in a 56 gallon plastic bin, with only 6 three inch screened holes in the lid. and yes they smelled terrible. I have moved the largest size I buy (3 week old, about 1/2 inch) into a XL Reptibreeze screen cage (2 X 2 X 4). I use egg cartons, and as I take crickets out I also take out the carton they were on. The food used to be a problem too, I use mostly organic dandelion greens, collard greens and kale, but i also put in fruit, everything is dusted heavily with Cricket Crack, Bug Buffet and powdered bee pollen and overnight it would rot (also due to the moisture/heat created by so many in the cage). I place the food on a large plate so it is easy to remove any leftovers, they get fresh food daily. No water is ever supplied, they get it through the fresh veggies. I steam clean the cage and bins when I make a new purchase.

The smaller sizes ( 2 week, 1/4 inch and 1 week. 1/8 inch, no pinheads since they can climb through the screen grid) are still kept in large plastic bins, but they now have fully screened lids (no stink and no condensation), there are also hundreds of dermestid beetles in the plastic tubs, which I spoon out of the feeding cup and replace into the bin if they end up there.

As for dubia infesting your house, it can happen. I find a couple every day just wandering around, (from a large colony that "escaped" [the dog did it]) I throw them back into the colony and forget about it. I did lose 2000 red runners, (lid didn't close completely and EVERY one of the little devils escaped, I occasionally find one loose in the house, but I think they either died off or made it outside.

 

[jamest0o0]

If you can't imagine 20k crickets, you'd hate mine even more... I buy 50 billion every other day, I feed them roadkill.

..Jk...

Just order ghanns crickets, they're the best, cleanest, never smell, etc. They live forever if fed well. I don't buy crickets anymore though I'll be working on a bioactive cricket bin sometime in the future that reproduces on it's own. I really wouldn't worry about infesting, I highly doubt it's ever happened with dubia. The 4-5 pest species =/= the thousands of other tropical species. Only ones I'd be concerned about in the hobby are red runners and lobsters.

 

[insectovore]

Bassets cricket ranch has been good for me because I always seem to get a significant overcount. I've also used one called five points crickets which has been good and I got at least what I paid for. I havent really had any bad cricket places I've tried, probably because I avoided places with lots of bad reviews, just some I get a lot more than others. pet store crix are always going to be the worst because they dont receive proper care for too long by the time you get them and this will cost way too much. Crix are very expensive even when you buy in bulk but they are still cheaper than a lot of insects and there is a lot of info on how to properly gutload them and lots of herps will eat them.

 

[Curlytails]

if you can get em locusts are the best way to go

 

[ToxiccKiwii]

If you hate @ToxiccKiwii's supply, mine is truly scary. I buy 20K every 5 or 6 days (depending on where weekends fall)

If you can't imagine 20k crickets, you'd hate mine even more... I buy 50 billion every other day, I feed them roadkill.

..Jk...

I CAN'T. You guys just made my day.

 

[NickTide]

Yeah I usually order them 500-1000 at a time. two feed 2 chameleons and 2 geckos, I tend to order them smaller than what I need them so I don't end up with a bunch of adults at the end of their life cycle. Cleaning is unfortunately that....cleaning. it's a mess, they stink, but my chameleons won't take to roaches, and can't keep feeding them superworms etc...so what can you do? But I try to clean at least every other day in the container I have them in. Definitely keep any egg cartons/paper towel/toilet rolls and swap them out somewhat frequently. They get soggy and gross with poop/pee after a while. The Paint scraper is a must and makes cleaning a lot easier!

Have you tried other species of roaches? Some chams that won't take dubias will take orange heads. And I've never heard of a cham refusing green bananas.... They are expensive and more difficult to raise though. But might be the bridge to get you chams into other roaches.

 

[Wowbango]

Have you tried other species of roaches? Some chams that won't take dubias will take orange heads. And I've never heard of a cham refusing green bananas.... They are expensive and more difficult to raise though. But might be the bridge to get you chams into other roaches.

I have tried dubias, yellow banana roaches, the green ones, orange heads, red runners...NOPE. It's like they all had a meeting with my wife and made some sort of deal so I would stop buying them.

 

[jamest0o0]

I have tried dubias, yellow banana roaches, the green ones, orange heads, red runners...NOPE. It's like they all had a meeting with my wife and made some sort of deal so I would stop buying them.

Where did you get yellow banana roaches? I've never seen them for sale. On the other hand, I just stop offering until they take roaches. Worked on all my chams so far, havent fed crickets in months

 

[Wowbango]

Where did you get yellow banana roaches? I've never seen them for sale. On the other hand, I just stop offering until they take roaches. Worked on all my chams so far, havent fed crickets in months

I got them from this website called roachcrossing.com. This was years ago, not sure what their availability is though. There's also a guy locally (in San Diego) that had a large colony that I bought some from.