Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I'm ok with mealworms but I want to add crickets to my gecko's diet so if I buy a dozen at a time and I need them to last for 2 or 3 days, in what kind of container should I keep them and what types of food items should be placed in there?

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0.1 Black Rat Snake (Aebischer)
0.1 Leopard Gecko (Gecki)

i would get a small plastic shoebox and let the crickets live in it.
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0.1 "Tremper" looking Albino Leopard gecko (Lex)
0.0.1 normal ball python (felix)
0.0.1 tiger crested gecko (peachs or cream)
1.1 Feral cats that we adopted (Fuzzy, and Bear)

-funny typos-
"There are six genes which determine the amount of melanism present in a person's skink"-about human skin color

please give me more typos

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0.1 Black Rat Snake (Aebischer)
0.1 Leopard Gecko (Gecki)

If you only have one leo, you should be okay with 1 dozen a week.(about $1 - $1.75 depending)
A lot of people use a "critter keeper" ($5) to house a small batch of crickets. Make sure you keep your crickets well fed & 'watered' at all times.

Food: If you look up "dr gecko" on google, you should be able to find the gutloading section. I've come up with my own version that is a little easier to make and keeps the crickets super loaded. Feel free to e-mail me for it. There is also a cricket feed by Flukers that we keep on hand, just in case.

Water: We've found that Flukers Gel water seems to work best, along with raw carrots. If you use water in a lid, chances are your crickets will be TSTL, and drown.

Supplements: We also keep a tiny plastic lid filled with a concoction of calcium, vitamins, high protein/fat mixtures and honey as a treat. (This is also great to gutload a select few crickets on in a seperate contatiner for a underweight lizard/gecko!)

We keep our feeder crickets in a 5 gallon tank ($10), several dozen at a time. In the cricket tank we have "cricket cardboard"-- which is really just clean, torn up, cardboard cup holders from a local take-out, for them to live and breed in. We also have three plastic lids for a food dish, gel water dish and a vitamin supplement dish.They generally live for about nine - fourteen days. They can live longer, but we try to keep the adults from developing wings. It's become a science for us, trying to figure out the cricket intake of our lizards/geckos.

We buy on average one dozen 'Large', one dozen 'medium' and two dozen 'small' every seven days or so, or as needed.

Our AFT eats around 3-5 crickets every other day, and we offer one cricket as a 'snack' on the off days. The Leo, we are still fighting with to eat crickets...we're having to trick her, and de-legging the crickets...which is not much fun and pretty sad.

Our other lizards go through the 'small crickets' like candy.

Hope this helped!
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0.1.0 African Fat Tail
0.1.0 Leopard Gecko
1.0.0 Flat Tail House Gecko
1.0.0 Long Tail Grass Lizards
1.0.0 Betta (Past away 3/17/04)
1.1.0 Cats

Thanks for all the great info, you certainly sound like you've had a lot of experience keeping crickets. I'll have to judge whether my leo can handle a normal cricket jumping around or if I'll have to use the 'break their legs' method. Either way I feel comfortable now in buying and keeping the crix, thanks a bunch.
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0.1 Black Rat Snake (Aebischer)
0.1 Leopard Gecko (Gecki)

Well, my baby gecko (4 inch), eat almost 8 crix a day ! Right now i feel like i'm always at the pet shop buying crix, lol. I simply get my crix in a 5 gallon, with egg crates (the cardboard type). A little water gel and a pinch of fish food, some potato and carrot slice. They do fine...at the beginnig, i was chopping the leg of my crix, but now i give him one at a time, it,s fun to see him chasing them around shaking his tail.

Mizar 21
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1.0 Collared lizard (Ganymede)
1.0 Florida banded water snake (Serpentard)
1.2 Cats
1.0 leopard gecko (Gethsemani)
Bunch of tropical fish

Sounds like you have a nice healthy, growing leo. Do you dust your crickets with calcium at all? I was wondering what the best way was to do that, maybe dump a couple in a zip lock bag with some powder and shake it up?
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0.1 Black Rat Snake (Aebischer)
0.1 Leopard Gecko (Gecki)

I do dust them once in a while, i move my crix from their cage to the gecko enclosure in a large plastic cup. Once in a while i add vitamins or calcium and shake them a bit. I also have a small dish with calcium in the enclosure.

Mizar 21
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1.0 Collared lizard (Ganymede)
1.0 Florida banded water snake (Serpentard)
1.2 Cats
1.0 leopard gecko (Gethsemani)
Bunch of tropical fish

Just put a slice of potato in there with them. They'll get their water and food from it. But, I'd recommend that you gut load your crickets by feeding them a nutritious diet. Don't know how nutritious a potato is for geckos... heh.

I keep crix for a week or more. I use a small plastic cage called a cricket keeper that you can buy for like five bucks at petsmart. It has two black tubes in it so you can dispense the crix easily. You can also buy a blue gelatin substance called cricket quencher if you dont want to do the potato. If you want to gut load just mix some cricket dust in with ground up oatmeal and put it in the keeper for the crix to eat. Good luck. My gecko loves crix, they are more of a challange for him I guess. Hope I helped.

Jackal
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Rebel Born, Rebel Bred

Thank you very much, I'll be sure to check out Petsmart tomorrow. Anything to make life easier is always welcome.
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0.1 Black Rat Snake (Aebischer)
0.1 Leopard Gecko (Gecki)