Reptile & Amphibian Forums

i have 3 baby leopard geckos. i'm wondering how other people deal with feeding them each around 6 crickets every day...that adds up pretty quick, and it seems like i'm always running out of crickets. do any of you have a good system of keeping a ton of crickets at a time so you dont have to go to the petstore all the time? how many do you get at once? do you think a 10 gallon would suffice to keep a ton of small crickets in? thanks for any info you have

-chip

I use a long rubbermaid container from walmart I believe its 50 gal. I put on one end the egg crates and tubes and stuff for them to crawl on on the other end I have a rubbermaid lid that is used for the food savers. I out it upside down kinda like a bowl and thats where I put their food it. For the water I orderd this watering system so I dont have to water them daily. Its like a jar upside down that goes into a bowl with rocks around and the crix go to that its like drinking in nature. I order about 1000 crix and order them a smaller then what I need because they will grow and breed. Everything seems to be doing great. I believe if you are going to get a lot of tiny crix that you are always better off with a larger tank, just make sure they have plenty of egg crates to hide in.
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2 male leos: Winky HY & Lenny TangCT & 4 Female Leos: Sunshine Super tang, Serenity Tremper HY Jungle Albino, Skittle Hypo-Golden, and Banana Patternless.

I keep my crickets in a 10 gallon, with lots of egg cartons stacked on one side. I also have a little oatmeal on the ground, and a food dish and those cricket drink "pillows." I ussually buy 500 at a time, and they will lay eggs for me, and I raise those.

You can breed circkets if you want I do this in a ten gallon but the easiest soloution would be to just feed them mealworms and crickets as a treat. mealworms are easier to keep and are generally less expensive than crickets. I can only keep crickets alive for about a week once they reach breedable size so the constant removal of dead crickets is neccesary. you said your geckos really only eat around 540 a month and it is sometimes difficult to control the ammount of crickets you breed, I started out with eight females and six males and four weeks later I hade around 1000. Also as long as your geckos are old enough they can eat any size crickets but you waon't be able to keep small crickets small for very long.

Hi

I use a ten gallon tall tank and have a screen lid for it. I usually order my crickets from a cricket farm/supplier. I empty the crickets into the tank and I keep the egg carton packaging that comes in with the crickets. I tear the cartons into the certain sizes I want and make a climbing area on both sides of the tank with them and I will put food and water in the middle or at the front. I put cricket food or bran in a jar lid, and I also have three or four other jar lids that I will put cotton balls into and then fill those caps with water and that way the crickets have something to climb on and won't drowned and it works great.

On the top of the egg cartons that I have built up for the crickets I will put some monkey chow things in some of the gullies of the egg cartons and then put an empty toilet paper roll over the top of them. When it comes time to get some crickets out, I will hold the tall plastic bag in the tank and pick up the toilet paper rolls one at a time and shake them into the plastic bag, until I have the quantity of crickets I need and it works great for me.

I usually order 2 to 3,000 crickets at a time, the half inch size ones or the three quarter inch size ones. Yes, I have a lot of L. Geckos, they are addicting. I have seventeen of them.

Sincerely, TLB