Fan of banded crickets

[rambonerzilla]

Hi everyone I just wanted to take second to say two things and ask one..... #1 I messed up two weeks ago and purchased 1000 banded pinheads from ebay ( didn't do my measuring before I ordered) but I received close to 2000 or maybe 3000 from a educated guess. I'm assuming the didn't care too much about the amount of those little critters where really in the box..... so I'm in week two of my husbandry of them( there growing fairly fast with little to no smell) and have had zero die off. #2 to make up for the lack of appropriate size I ordered 1000 1/2" from ghans..... they came promptly and with zero I repeat zero dead. Since the (12 days) I've had 2 die and about 250 devoured by my captain Spock. I'm overly pleased with these dang banded crickets and have started to get a good colony going. #3 is there any law I'm breaking by selling the banded crickets throughout the Houston area? Do I need some sort of permit or approval? Petco and petsmart literally rape there reptile owners on the price of crickets that just die with in a few days if not a day.... what do you think?

 

[Nursemaia]

I love banded crickets, hardy things. I buy mine from ebay too, 1000 at a time and they last about 3 weeks.
I had to go to PetCo to get some crickets while I was waiting for a shipment and besides being ridiculously expensive they had no idea how to even scoop the crickets out of the bin. The girl put gloves on because she was afraid of them and was going to count out 100 of them 1 by 1. I had to show her the measuring guide on the scoop so I didn't have to wait for her to count them all out and then she put them in the bag with no cardboard or air. She was going to blow into the bag to blow it up. I had to show her how to bag the crickets and explain that blowing into the bag would kill them because of the CO2 in your breath. As I was checking out I saw her going around to all of the associates showing them the measuring guide. Apparently no one knew it was there.

 

[chamsarecool]

Crickets keep pretty good when the humidity is not too high ime. The smaller ones can handle higher humidity than adults. What happens is people fill the cricket box with a pound of greens and humidity shoots through the roof and once a few die in a higher humidity environment the rest follow. So if you start with good stock, keep the bin dry and remove dead crickets every few days, ime a mass die off is not likely and I've been feeding crickets for about 25 years or so now.