keeping ya crickets

[Justdragons]

what do you put in your cricket tub for your crickets to live in? more so where do you get your egg cartons from?? i need a supply. do you buy them or mooch them from your mates?? any help would be good. cheers

 

[snakeynewbie]

Mooch egg cartons from your mates for freebies but if you want to actually buy new ones you can get them at craft shops like Riot Art and Craft .

 

[Justdragons]

ah sounds good. the mooch idea sounded like a sure bet but turns out us reptile people are battling the chicken people who have to many chickens and need to give eggs away. thus for already have alot of people saving cartons for them. dang chicken people, dont they know they could have big monitors in those averys..

 

[TaraLeigh]

Haha. I saw the most awesome chook set up the other day..... would have been SO much better fitted out for a monitor or 2 or 3 or water dragons and turtles, I dreamt, oh, did I dream. Aha.
But back to the crickets... yeah, I also use toilet rolls and other rolls.
You can fold one and put it inside the other. That works well.
Um.... Hope I helped.

 

[feathergrass]

i have a cricket keeper for mine they go up into two black tubes that i can remove and tap out a few to dust then slide the tube back into the cricket keeper i also feed my cricket gel ( i kept finding drowned crickets in the water not now though) and some processed dragon food soaked in a lil water

 

[Justdragons]

Cheers Taraleigh, thats i great idea. i have heaps of them about the place.

Cheers feathergrass but i have too many, i buy 1000 a fortnight and my cricket keeper wasnt big enough cheers for the reply though

 

[feathergrass]

OMG! they must make a hello of a noise lol!

 

[Kimberlyann]

Toilet paper rolls, they love getting in between news paper as well, chicken wire if you have any little squares bend them around to an arch. For water i put paper towel in a little yoghurt cups and just keep the paper towel moist. I feed mine orange peel (make sure there is no juice on it) banana peel, carrot shavings and crushed up dry dog food

 

[black_headed_mon]

i cut up fruit and veg for the water carrot,potatoe whatever i got, i just fold up cardboard if i don't have enough egg cartons,toilet rols etc

 

[K3nny]

if you're short crumpled newspaper could also work, + you can take a small clump and shake the crickets off during feeding time like a salt shaker

btw if you're buying by the thousand's don't they stink up the place? esp. the dead ones

edit: darn didn't see kim's post

 

[maddog-1979]

i just eat alot of eggs to get the empty egg crates.......not good for the heart but my guns dont mind the protien,lol

 

[SamNabz]

I keep mine in a 52L plastic tub. Cut a piece out of the lid and glued aluminium mesh over the hole.

2x rectangular egg cartons, leaning against 2 sides of the tub - paper towel roll with one side closed off (folded and stapled) lays in between the egg cartons.

The crickets always hide in the paper towel roll, which makes it easier for me to feed them off. Simply pull the roll out of the tub and put them in a tall plastic container to dust.

At first I just used the regular egg cartons that you get when you buy eggs from the super market, but my cricket supplier ships the crickets with 2-3 rectangular egg cartons in the box, so I have been using them.

 

[GeckoJosh]

Great place to get egg cartons from is asking bakery's, they go through that many eggs it isnt funny

 

[jack]

i use 10mm black poly pipe cut into 150mm lengths and for small crickets the casing of black biros. when i need to feed i just lift out a tube and pop it in enclosure, or blow the crickets out into the enclosure. also makes dusting easier.

 

[mad_at_arms]

Great place to get egg cartons from is asking bakery's, they go through that many eggs it isnt funny

Cafe's and fish & chip shops also.

 

[black_headed_mon]

Great place to get egg cartons from is asking bakery's, they go through that many eggs it isnt funny

as a manager of a bakery we dont use eggs in cartons,we get them in 5-10 ltr bags.nothin would be funny bout crackin 50 ltr per day!!!

 

[Chris1]

maccas?

i mooch, i have so many people collecting them now i need mroe insects,...!!

 

[Justdragons]

Lol yeah the noise is bad but not until the 2nd week, I buy mediums and feed a little more rather than larges as that would do my head in, As it is my room sounds like an amazon rainforest. I think because they are on a 2 week cycle and i keep them very clean they dont get a chance to smell and i dont seem to get alot of deaths.

I keep them in a large tub with almost the whole top cut out and replaced with metal fly screen as is most the sides and use no substrate, This is kept on the floor under my ewd tank as its the coolest tank in the room. I have a small plastic tub with quite moist coir peat in for them to drink from as crickets are dumb and commit suicide if there is any water at all i find.I feed bok choy and carrot and have a bunch of tubes that come in the bag when you purchase and some egg cartons for hides.

Since i changed to live foods from ARC ( not my choice ) ive had a mortality rate this cycle of 3 which amazed me. i came to that number as when i ran out of crikets i went to clean the tub and after taking all the egg cartons out there were only 3 dead on the bottom. not sure if crickets eat their dead or not? IMO live foods has been worth the little extra money. Ill be staying with them.

sorry for the essay lol.

Toby

 

[S&M Morelia]

I have a small colony of crix that I have going to feed my only central beardie.
A setup isn't hard to make to breed, I really don't see why people don't do it more often.

They are an easy animal to keep and breed if you give them the basics.

I'll grab a vid of my little breeding colony and how I set it up on the weekend if anyone is interseted.
(will put it on youtube)

 

[Justdragons]

Yeah chuck it up for sure and put the link up. Ive been keen to give it a bash for a while now. as i understand the moist coir peat can be moved in to another clean tub after the females lay their eggs in it? the reason i change this every few days is because ive been told there will be eggs in it.