Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hey there, I need to have lots of small feeders like 10,000 a week pin head crickets would be fine, would that be the best thing? If so please refer a good web site on breeding them. Thanks in advance.

>>Hey there, I need to have lots of small feeders like 10,000 a week pin head crickets would be fine, would that be the best thing? If so please refer a good web site on breeding them. Thanks in advance.

Unless fruit flys would work I think you are stuck. Not many inverts start out that small for you. Happily, getting pinheads from breeding is usually not as hard as growing them up.
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Sonya

>>Hey there, I need to have lots of small feeders like 10,000 a week pin head crickets would be fine, would that be the best thing? If so please refer a good web site on breeding them. Thanks in advance.

You can try breeding crickets, but it requires you buy adults and get them to lay eggs. All you need to do for this is use soil substrate like bed-a-beast or peatmoss. Make sure whatever you use has no pesticides or fertilizers in it. Moisten the substrate in a container and place container in crickets cage so they have access in and out. Leave in container for a day then remove and place a lid on the container. Keep container warm in the lower to mid 80s and babies hatch in a week or less. Place those pinheads in a container and add hiding places, food, and moisture source. Place a new container every day so you can harvest as many eggs as possible. Mold is likely to happen, but still try hatching the eggs since only the top surface is molded. Don't let substrate the eggs are in dry out, but don't make it a wet sop either.

Fruit flies is another option. You can buy the medium or make your own. You can buy one container/vial of adults and make a large supply in a matter of weeks. Keep making 1-2 new culutures every 5-7 days mattering on how much you need. I use plastic containers I bought from Smart & Finals with coffee filter for a lid kept in place with a rubber band. You can also buy excelsior from a craft store to give the fruit flies surface areas.

Personally fruitflies have been easiest for me. But variety is always good and sometimes you need something a little bigger than fruit flies so crickets are needed. Mealworms are also easy to breed, but harvesting them to feed to your reptile can at times be a chore. Crickets are great, but buying pinheads at the same price as adults seem a bit highly priced. But breeding crickets can be time consuming with their high mortality rate, but if all you need is pinheads, it might not be a big deal...other than needing a constant supply of adult breeding crickets... Roaches is another option, but baby roaches are bigger than pinhead crickets so they might be too big anyways and they take a while to establish, much less pick out the sizes you need.
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~ Juli ~
www.Polliwog-Design.com