Reptile & Amphibian Forums

We just got 4 beautiful leopard geckos donated to our school. To keep their maintenance costs down, we are considering raising our own crickets and superworms. How long would it take for us to have a steady 30 large crickets/week and an equal amount of superworms? We also have 4 fire bellied toads which consume about 80 small crickets/week, so they could benefit from the cricket life cycle earlier.

The best advice is to go to wormman.com (a sales site) that also has real good info on breeding your own.
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**Kenn**

>>We just got 4 beautiful leopard geckos donated to our school. To keep their maintenance costs down, we are considering raising our own crickets and superworms. How long would it take for us to have a steady 30 large crickets/week and an equal amount of superworms? We also have 4 fire bellied toads which consume about 80 small crickets/week, so they could benefit from the cricket life cycle earlier.

Couple of thoughts.....
I am kinda figuring that the gex are adults and not growing babys, but even then I would recommend against the superworms if by superworms you mean zophobas....the big beasts that get a couple inches long. If you just mean large regular mealies...okay.

You could probably have much better success with regular mealworms than zophobas and they are more digestible for the gex. Throw a bunch of chysalis and beetles into a tub, feed and veges for water, layers of egg carton and paper towel, some oatmeal and they will go to town making tiny babies moderately fast. Couple of months.
Crix are pretty much a PITA to raise and require more space and time and stink than the average person wants the hassle of. Instead I would recommend the idea of going to Reptilefood.com and buying a thousand box of smaller crix. You want smaller so that they will grow for you rather than die of old age before you get time to feed them all off. Dumping a thousand into a slick sided tub and layers of egg carton, again, food and veges and you will be good to go. Depending on if you can find another herper or two to go in on a shipment with you it is gonna run you per box anywhere from $12-20 , shipping is key.

Lastly, I am trying to picture how 4 fire bellied toads are eating 80 crix a week. I am thinking you are losing a bunch and wasting most or you have some obese toads. Or you are feeding crix that are too too small.
As examples
I have a trio of Chubby Frogs (Palm of your hand sized adults), a grey tree frog and a gex, an oscellated skink and occassionally toss some to my ackie(who normally gets roaches and pinkie mice) and I still only bring home maybe 30-40 crix a week.
At work (a ps) we have a variety of fire bellied toads, green tree frogs and anoles.....typically I will feed a group of half a dozen of each of these (so 18 animals) two to four dozen crix a week.
With toads I would say feed a size up(medium at most pet stores) your crix size and save money. I am assuming you will pay the same for each size as that is the norm in the shops here. So, size up the food and maybe go to 30 medium of them, maybe even less.

To get back to your original question.
Mealworms are gonna take a month or two to kick in to breeding so that you can start feeding them off.

Crix will take as long but will require several different tubs for different age/sized babies and damp conditions....food and care and tolerance for the stink. I personally raise cockroaches....but the school will likely really frown on that.
Crix are gonna take a month to start making anything and probably several weeks grow time depending on size wanted.
If you investigate

http://www.chameleonnews.com/year2003/jan2003/crickets/crickets.html

http://skylab.org/~chugga/cricket/

My own experience was that about the time you think you have a bunch of lovely pinheads they get too dry for ten seconds and all die. Not that I am being negative. Roaches are cake to raise but have that whole negative connotations.
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Sonya

I'm not mean. You're just a sissy.
Happy Bunny

I raise superworms and mealworms. I realize your post was about those bugs but you may want to consider tropical roaches. I have mostly switched over to roaches though. I still do the others in small quantities because I like to raise them and for some variety in feeding. The roaches are so easy it is scary. I do orange heads because they are pretty. Mine are probably "neglected" and still produce 100s of babies every month. You can do some searches on raising them. To long of a post to say what I do.
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James and Vickie Bryan
Bryan Reptiles
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bryanreptiles@lycos.com
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