Crickets...

[leoman]

My crickets are constanly dying and i don know why...
I keep them in a 10 gallon aquarium with news paper in the botton also a gatorade cap where i put the flukers orange cubes wich provide food and water the temperature is around 76 degrees i usualy buy 30 each week and feed them to my various pets but in about three days about half are dead..... could some one tell me whats going on??????

 

[Justin Carl]

Where are you getting them from?
Local pet store I assume?
They may be dying of old age.
Their own poop will kill them.
You should be gutloading with something better than that too.

 

[leoman]

I get them...

I get them from a local petsmart I think that the flukers criket diet is enouphe? isent it? i heard about the poop but there isent no way to clean the cage with the crikets in it so there are stuck with their own poop and about the age no problem because i alway get small crickets wich are young I think?

 

[Justin Carl]

Ask them who they get their crickets from.
Tell them that half are usually dead in 3 days too.
You could try to get them a little warmer.
I would also use a wet and dry food.
Try to get some of that Monster Cricket Food or the Flukers Cricket Food next time you are there.

 

[Julirs]

When I tried to keep crickets in a glass aqaurium they died. A well ventilated plastic container with vents cut out and replaced with screen will keep 1000 crickets alive for a month. Petstore crickets always die on me too-I never see them fed and they are generally older it seems. I always order 500-1000 1/2 inchers delivered to my door and they do great!

 

[AFH]

Check out Lasergecko's gallery. He's got a cool cricket keeper set up that keeps the poo out of the crickets. Good ventilation, too.

 

[leoman]

ok

thanks every one the proble with crickets bulk is that I dont like them and im afraid they will get out... its happend... think about this

you go into the shower and as you turn the water on a cricket jumps on you it freaks me out so with less cricket less posibility of this happening again and thank again.

 

[Julirs]

Crickets don't bother me in the slightest, but I am very bothered by the fact that my house is filling with spiders that are after the crickets! Now a big spider in the shower-that would freak me out!

 

[AFH]

Yeah, I've got cricket stalking spiders, too. I found a big fat one drowned in a plant water tray the other day. It's abdomen was about the size of a penny!

Cricket poaching bastards!

 

[questnjurny]

oh are you guys serious? I have enough spider issues without them being drawn to the house for the stupid crickets! ick ick ick. I've just started seeing the first few of them. They are disgustingly huge here, but I'm hoping that I had a few extras last year because the house was empty fora few months before I moved in. Crickets are gross, but spider soooo much worse!

 

[Justin Carl]

Get roaches then!
Simple as that!
I hate crickets, and what a waste of money too.
You spend 3.00 for 30 crickets and 15 die!
You could buy 300 roaches for 65$ they wont die, and never buy feeders again!
Its beautiful!

 

[AFH]

Justin, which roaches are you using? My real worry with them is the fact that roaches can squeeze through the tiniest cracks. My cages aren't what you'd call hermetically sealed! I'd love to have a renewable food source, but I also don't want a roach infestation in the Lizard Lodge.

 

[Justin Carl]

I use Dubias.
Cup feed if your worried about them getting out.
The only problem with cup feeding is that roaches will huddle together, and when your chameleon grabs one sometimes another will come flying out of the cup because it is holding onto the one your chameleon is trying to eat.

 

[RhettusMaximus]

roaches

There's a few different species of roaches that I use. I found that each one of my chams always prefer one species of roach to another and they each like a different kind. My bearded dragons on the other hand like anything that moves you put infront of them.

My veiled cham male will typically only eat freshly molted Madagascar Giant Hissing Cockroaches (luckily I have enough hissers that there are always some molted).

My female veiled also prefers hissers but will eat Blaptica dubia and Turkistans out of a cup.

My male Ambilobe Panther prefers dubia and lobster roaches to any other roach, but will occasionally take a young hisser if he feels like it.

I've tried other species of roaches such as Eublaberus distanti ( 6 spotted roach) and Blaberus discoidalis (false deaths head roach) but my chams don't seem to like them much. Several of my friends swear by the discoids and distanti, but my chams just have a different pallet I think!