Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I've been having trouble getting my crickets from birth to about a week.... I have finally figured out how to breed them and had about 6-800 hatch 2 weeks ago and now I have like 40 left.... I just had over 1000 hatch a few days ago and I can already see bodies piling up. I had them in a small tupperware container with a few small pieces of egg crate with them. The first batch I had no substrate and I fed them mostly the gutload I use for my adults (from Amer. Cricket Ranch) and I used the cricket water you can get... I broke it up in little pieces so they didn't all get stuck to it. But now I've got this second batch in a slightly smaller container... It's a 2 gallon ice cream container and I have some chicken feed substrate with baby rice cereal mixed in, so I know they are eating if they want to and I've still been feeding them the cricket water. I gave both batches small pieces of chopped veggies once or twice. They are all in my chameleon room, which is about 80-82 during the day and around 70-75 at night with 60-70 percent humidity all the time. I just can't keep buying thousands of crickets and have them all be gone in a week and have to get more. I've done pretty good at keeping adult crickets alive... This gets so frusturating for me. Any help I'd really appreciate it... I'm losing about a cricket a minute while we speak. Thanks!
-Tyler Stewart

I too have had fustrations with breeding crickts because the majority of the babies don't live to adulthood. Suggestions I have had in the past was to make sure they had fine flakes or powdered foods and a small pile of moist substrate (like the kind the cricket eggs were laid in). Also making sure you have enough room and hiding spaces for them. I used to use a container that was about 15 gallon size with egg crates on the bottom, but each day I would find less and less. It seems to not be worth the time to breed crickets because of the slow growth and high mortality rate. Cricket sellers work on a large scale, so it is worth asking them how to do it. Unless you need a constant supply of pinheads, breeding crickets can cause difficulty (unless you are lucky and found the secret of lowering mortality). Roaches and mealworms are alot easier to breed... Sorry I can't be of more help...
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- Juli
Polliwog Design - Under construction.

I've heard that high morality is normal, I just didn't think that 90 percent was normal. I have been thinking about putting them on a moist peat moss substrate for an extra week or something. Maybe I'll try it. I do need a very constant supply of pinheads to 2 weeks olds, as I have tons of chameleon eggs getting close to hatching, and a few babies left that need 2 week olds right now. I'm going to be keeping them in my house (instead of in the normal reptile room, where it's a little warm for babies), so even fruit flies aren't as good of an option because they escape glass tanks. I think it's inevitable that I need to get crickets breeding. I hate paying for so many pinheads when you can get the same amount of large crickets for the same price. It seems like you're getting nothing for your money. Thanks for your help.
-Tyler Stewart

You may want to try Lobster roaches (Nauphoeta cinerea); they are quite small upon hatching and are an excellent feeder insect. The adults are about 1.25 inches, are soft-bodied and low on chitin.