> From: Camille Thompson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 13:35:51 -0500 > > > If they are younger or smaller then two week old crickets. Neither of > > these size crickets is hard to keep alive. > > Theoretically, no. But I always have massive die-offs with anything > under about 1/3". > > Well I'll have to see about getting some more then. Locally I haven't > found anyone who carries them quite small enough for this guy (and they > are outrageous anyway, like 10 cent each!) (I recently moved from a town > where I didn't have these supply problems thanks to a good reptile shop > locally.)
A while back I posted my "Easy Non-Patented Mealworm System". I've developed a similar system for small scale production of small crickets: Materials: gallon (4 liter) glass jars - free from restaurants. quart or liter deli cartons. toilet paper roll cores. paper towels. fast food sauce cups, about 5cm (2") in diameter or a bit larger. coco fibre. food for crickets. How to get eggs: Put some wet coco fibre in a sauce cup, and put it in the bottom of a glass jar. Add a few slightly flattened toilet paper roll cores. A good cover for these jars is the top of a cottage cheese carton. I cut a large hole in the center and tape screen over it for good ventilation. Buy 100 adult crickets. Put all the mature females (they have wings and ovipositors) in the jar with some food, and feed the males to your animals. This minimizes noise. The females will lay their long thin eggs in the fibre. After a few days, or a week, or when the sauce cup has a lot of eggs visible through the side, replace with another sauce cup of coco fibre. Don't let the fibre dry out. Female crickets will lay one or two batches of eggs and then die. They should be kept fairly warm - I put the jar on heat tape except in hot weather. When the crickets start to die off, start a new batch. If the jar gets too humid, or if the droppings and dead crickets on the bottom get damp, you'll soon have a revolting mess as ammonia is generated and kills the insects, which release more moisture, etc. How to get little crickets: Put a paper towel in a deli carton, so it covers the bottom and part of the sides. Add a little water to dampen the towel. Set the sauce cup with the fibre and eggs on the bottom. Cover the container and keep it in a warm place. I use my incubator except in warm weather. After 1.5-3 weeks the crickets will start to hatch. These guys are really tiny - fruit fly size or less. They can get through a large pin hole. If they contact a droplet of condensation, they will stick to it and die. Hence the paper towel to absorb moisture. However, if they dry out, they will also die. Hence the moist coco fibre in the sauce cup with the eggs. Before I figured out how to manage the moisture for the tiny crickets, I lost a lot of them. This system makes it simple and easy. When you see the crickets starting to appear, put cup and paper towel in a clean gallon jar, keep it warm, keep the coco fibre moist and let them continue to hatch. I sometimes start them off with a little finely powdered tropical fish food, but they seem to do fine on wheat germ, which is what I feed them afterwards. Don't let the food get damp or it will mold, so don't feed too much at once. The crickets seem to grow very slowly at first, but once they are about 6mm (1/4") they grow much faster. A lot depends on temperature, and again, it's important to keep moisture available without letting it get too moist, so be sure to keep the coco peat wet and the rest dry until the crickets are large enough to get their moisture from eating vegetables. Give them some pieces of egg carton or toilet paper roll cores to crawl around on if they look crowded. While this is not a very practical way of raising lots of large crickets, it's a low-noise, low-odor, low-hassle way of getting lots of little ones. _______________________________________________ Global Gecko Association http://www.gekkota.com Classifieds http://www.gekkota.com/cgi-gekkota/classifieds.cgi gecko mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.gekkota.com/mailman/listinfo/gecko
