Reptile & Amphibian Forums

i found some tiny, black, catipillar looking things crawling in my cricket keeper... i dont know what they are... ive tried researching to find out... PLEASE SOMEONE TELL ME THEY ARE LIKE LARVAE AND NOT SOME TYPE OF PARASITE! id just really like to know what they are, and if theyre not larvae... how they got there? what can i do to make sure they never come back....????

I've heard this once when someone ordered crix. People said it was just bettles and them are the larvae or whatever it's called. They will turn into beetles once they go through metamorphisis. You could just feed them to your frogs if their just beetles. I think they eat like bran or oatmeal but not very sure. Since you probaly have some kind of cereal like dry food in there they might just be trying to find some food. I don't think they will attack your crix or nothing.

good thank God theyre not parasites... ive been freaking out about it the whole time... i actually already put them down the sink b/c my dad warned that they might be parasites.. but im glad they were just beetles... but how could they have gotten there?

They are pretty scary looking little things but they do just turn into little black beetles. I imagine the beetle are get in with the crickets and lay eggs in the substrate so you get a few of these little "alien" crawlies in with your crickets. I haven't fed them out to my any of my animals but they are harmless.

I'm not sure how. But they are mealworms I think because mealworms change into beetles. I've actually have raised mealworms and had about a hundred mealworms and about 25 beetles. Their pretty cool to keep.

They are the larvae of a small flying beetle type insect. They are harmless to the crickets and your pets and are common in shipments of live crickets. They can escape and cause a home infestation so you want to keep a screen top on your cricket enclosure. I got this information from my cricket supplier in California.

Randy
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Firehouse Herps

Derementis beetle larvae are blackish, with some brown, and very spiney, or hairy looking. They are carion feeders. They feed on the dead crickets and cricket parts at the bottom of cricket colonies. Some museums uses certain derementis beetles/larvae for the preparation of bones for display.
As for the wisdom of feeding carion feeders to your pets, I don't know if I would do it. These things eat dead crickets and ingest the assorted diseases found within.