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Posted by Kev on August 04, 2001 at 16:04:05:
In Reply to: have KEV help me out posted by Robert on August 03, 2001 at 00:04:58:
As I mentioned before, breeding crickets is quite easy. First, I feed all my crickets (new borns and adults) carrots, various lettuces, apples and whatever other fruit I may have lying around. I rip the leafy food into small pieces, and shave the carrots and apples. I also feed them a mixed dry food. The dry food contains crunched up cereals (I find Corn Flakes, Special K and any type of bran cereals are most liked), high colour flake fish food, kelp, cricket feed (I use Flukers brand), vitamin powder and calcium powder. I mix up a big container full and feed the crickets daily (I remove any uneaten food from the previous day).
To breed the little guys I fill up 3 plastic sandwich containers with Bed-a-Beast, make the bedding moist, and put them in the large Tupperware container where I house my adult crickets. To breed you should start off with at least 50 adult crickets. I leave the sandwich containers in there for about 5 days. I mist them each morning to keep them moist (crickets only lay eggs in moist substances). After I take them out I cover them with lids (holes drilled in them for air exchange) and put them in my make shift incubator.
The incubator consists of a 5 gallon aquarium, screen top, incandescent light fixture and a 25 watt day-glo light. The bottom is filled with a couple of inches of sand. I also have an under tank heater but I have not used it as the light gives off more than enough heat. I place the sandwich containers in the sand, crank up the light, and let nature take its course. I mist the containers every couple of days (with the lids on them a lot of the moisture just falls back into the soil as it evaporates). I keep the temperature at 91 degrees. I find this temperature hatches the eggs the quickest, higher temperatures kill many of the eggs. After a few days you will notice a number of small eggs. There will be a lot more under the surface of the substrate. After 10 days you should start to see pinhead crickets. I then take the lids off the sandwich containers, throw in some food (as mentioned above) and also small sponges that are damp (do not use open sources of water, the crickets will commit mass suicide). Sometimes I throw in a few pieces of cricket 'gel-water' but I find the really small crickets get stuck on this and eventually die. I also drop in egg cartons to give the crickets somewhere to hide. 3 or 4 days after the eggs start to hatch I turn off the light as heat is no longer necessary. After a few weeks the crickets are big enough to move out of the incubator and into a general population container. For the first week they are in their new home I fill the bottom of the container with lots of cereals which helps fatten the crickets up quickly. You can feed your lizard the crickets once you feel they are big enough for consumption. I repeat the process every couple of weeks and get between 500 and 1000 crickets each time I breed them.
A few points; you should only use the substrate 2 or 3 times. After this I notice the crickets won’t lay eggs in it (soil becomes contaminated). Crickets can live 8 to 10 weeks. It’s important to keep them very dry if you want them to live this long. Moisture causes ammonia build up and the crickets will die. You should also remove any dead crickets at least once a week (I rarely have crickets die).
The link below will take you to some pictures.
You can also try these links for more information.
http://www.sonic.net/~melissk/crickets.html
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~devo0028/ccricket.htm
http://magic.hurrah.com/~chugga/cricket/
Good luck.
