Why are my crickets dying...

[Bigskny1]

Got them in a little cage with the egg crates and give them the flunkers calcium water gel. I also put some slices of carrot in there with them. Am I giving them to much of the gel or are they just crapy crickets.

 

[DavidBuchan]

What temps? Any pics? My crickets have soil and egg crates. I feed calcium bran as well as veg(and other gutload), no water gel and they do fine on top of my monitor viv.

 

[little leaf]

I have been told...to much protein can kill them, and also , they can die from a dirty cage ( not that yours is ) one of the lab people at BGSU told me this- and they keep alot of crickets !! lol
I keep mine in shredded paper, on a heat pad, I use a dish w/ paper towel in it for water - and change it as needed, make sure its not standing water- they drowned - mine last about 6 - 8 weeks and breed too- I have over 2,000 pin heads
for gut load, I used SANDRACHAMELEONS blog res/ to make my own - the crix love her "cooking" + oat meal, and NON MEDICATED low protein chick feed ( but we have chickens - 50 lbs may be a bit much to buy ) also, they need alot of air - I don't keep a lid on mine, I use a tall tote, with a shipping tape band , they can not crawl on the tape, so fall back in
hope this helped

 

[Randi]

I don't know if this is helpful, but I found out from a breeder at an expo that mine were dying because I didn't take the dead ones out... apparently if you leave the dead ones in, they release toxicities which kill the other crickets. I also didn't have enough air flow. I now have better air flow, water crystals, food, and I keep it clean in there, and I have less die offs. I also started using dubia in conjunction with crickets and I use them both as staples now, and I hardly ever have dubia die offs... I find them dead in the cage because I over dust them sometimes, but that's all.

 

[dlegare]

Could be crappy crickets. I doubt it's the jell crap but I hate it. There is a virus that kills the domestic house cricket (Acheta domesticus) the virus is harmless to other animals.

I have pretty good luck feeding pelleted bird food (Harrison's high potency) Oranges for water and bee pollen every few days

 

[Bigskny1]

Should I quit using the gel stuff? I need to put some kind if soil in the bottom and start gut loading more. Just got the Cham on Tuesday so still learning