Reptile & Amphibian Forums

This may have been said previously before but I haven't' seen it.

I feed my crested the Meal Replacement Powder and crickets. Since I'd prefer her to eat the MRP I don't use too many crickets. A dozen lasts me almost 2 weeks.

I keep the crickets in a small plastic cricket keeper, and always use one of the commercial cricket drinks for them.

Every week about half the crickets die off, and the ones that are still alive maybe hydrated but I figure they've burned up most of their nutritional value anyway. Soooo...

Last week I began putting a spoonful of the MRP in with the crickets, as well as the cricket drink and in a week and a half I haven't found a dead cricket yet. Also I figure the ones being fed make for a more nutritious meal.

Any one have any thoughts on this?

I always feed any leftover diet to the crickets. It probably is more nutrititous for them than cricket water anyway. At least you solved your problem of dying crickets! I have always been a bit leary of those "waters"- your experiments just reinforce my doubts.

you didn't mention providing any food for your crickets. If they are not fed something, they will die off and the remaining are actually rather useless to be fed to any insect eating animal.

Crickets should be well gut loaded before being fed to insect eating animals, otherwise, they are just empty husks with little to no nutritional value.

The crested gecko diet can be fed to the crickets, also you can fed fresh greens and vegetables (washed first of course), orange slices, potatoes, squash and similar to act as a food source. Crushed low fat cat food, fish flakes, grains/meals can be added as well.
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PHLdyPayne

I was throwing insome of what ever fruit we had in the house. Apples, pears, oranges, peach ect, and still finding dead crickets.

Just putting the MRP seems to be working better, plus the powder has everything the gecko needs so it seems logical. And the crickets chow down on the powder. I've never seen so much cricket poop in the keeper before...lol

crickets are not all fruit eaters...they need a balanced diet to live and thrive as much as any other animal. The gecko diet is much better balanced nutrition wise than plain fruit alone.
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PHLdyPayne