Caring for Live Crickets
1. Where should I keep crickets?
Here's a detailed video that covers how to unbox your new crickets, and create a new home for them. But if you're a bibliophile, you can read the same details below.
Keep crickets in a large plastic storage tub that’s at least 16 inches high. Put a strip of slick packing tape around the top edge of the tub to prevent crickets from crawling out.
Alternatively, you can keep a lid on the container. If you choose to use a lid, you must make sure there is plenty of ventilation. Usually, this means cutting a large hole in the center of the lid and affixing a metal screen with staples or Gorilla glue. Do not use a fiberglass screen, since the crickets can and will chew through it.
2. What should I put in the tub?
Crickets are agoraphobic and need tight, dark places to hide. If they don’t have adequate harborage, they will become stressed and sick. The harborage must be made of non-toxic materials and should have a textured surface so it’s easy to climb.
Use large cardboard egg flats or paper towel tubes as harborage. Stacking the egg flats vertically allows more frass (a.k.a. cricket poop) to fall to the ground. This keeps the harborage cleaner and reduces ammonia and bacterial buildup in the harborage. It also reduces your workload since you won’t need to replace the harborage as often. Do not use pine or strong-smelling plastics in your cricket container.
You do not need to put any bedding material in the bottom of the tub. In fact, leaving the floor empty will make your cricket container easier to clean.
3. What should I feed crickets?
Live crickets will eat just about anything, but they do best on a grain-based diet similar to a high-protein chicken feed. You can make your own cricket food by blending 2 cups of chicken scratch with a half cup of dried dog or cat food until it is a fine powder. We also sell cricket food by the pound, which has been tested and optimized for crickets.
Crickets will happily eat a range of fresh fruits and vegetables if you choose to supplement their diet. We still suggest providing dried feed in addition to any fresh vegetables. Too much moisture can cause wet frass, which can lead to excess moisture and bacteria in your rearing habitat. If you choose to add fresh fruits and vegetables, replace the veggies regularly and watch carefully for signs of mold and rot. Do not feed crickets products that contain mangos.
4. How do I provide water to crickets?
Crickets are excellent at drowning in unfathomably small pools of water. Do not put water dishes into your cricket habitat without a good way to absorb excess water.
Here are a few options that work well:
- For large crickets, fill a dish with small pebbles. Add enough water for the pebbles to be wet, but make sure there are no pools of water.
- Fill a small dish with wet paper towels
- Put a wet sponge on a dish
- Place hydrated water crystals on a small plate
Make sure the side of the dish is textured enough for the crickets to crawl into it. Only use filtered water. Replace every two days to prevent bacterial build-up.
5. What temperature should I keep my crickets?
The cricket species that we grow here at Ovipost is called Gryllodes sigillatus, otherwise known as the Banded Cricket. It’s a tropical species and requires warm environments between 75°F - 90°F. If you want your crickets to grow quickly, keep them at the upper temp range. If you want them to last longer, keep them at the lower end of the range. Anything outside of this range will be stressful to the crickets and may result in early death.
Fantastic information! We’ve been using toilet paper and paper towel rolls. You can bend one lengthwise and slide it into another to make chambers inside for the crickets. For the nymphs (baby crickets) we cut the rolls in half and put 2 – 3 rolls inside of another. We cut them in half because they stay in a smaller container and we can stack them close to the heated side more easily. Making extra chambers cuts down on the exterior bulk as well.
Bottle caps make great food and water holders (if using the gel or sponges). We wash and save the best caps (not all are deep or shallow enough) and keep them in the “Frog Room.” We also wash and save plastic cups (like the kind Chobani yogurt or Blue Buffalo wet food come in). The Chobani are good for vermiculite when we attempt to breed, and the Blue Buffalo (BB) work great for the water gels. I also use the BB for cricket water with a wick.
We have a bakery that puts their delicacies on a plastic circle with a handle, and that circle fits snuggly into the yogurt and dog food containers. Fill the container with water, put a wick into the water (I crochet so have loads of undyed cotton yarn scraps), leave a portion of the wick out of the container, pop the circle in, and place the remaining wick on the top of the circle. Set the handle next to the rolls and the nymphs now have a ramp to get to and from the water with no danger of drowning or getting stuck to gels! The water stays clean of frass and the wick is easily replaced.
I’ve used magnets inside flat-sided containers so I can stick them to the walls near the upper portions of the harborages for lazy crickets (use a magnet on the outside wall to connect to the magnet on the inside). The magnets don’t have to be Super strong, but they do need to hold through 2 layers of plastic.
My last trick is to cut “ramps” out of containers while leaving a height inside for food or gels. The smaller crickets can get in an out more easily.
I’m always looking for ways to exercise ingenuity while making clean up and care easier, and to make throwaway containers useful, at least for a bit.
My last order had a hole in the screen and my porch and I’m sure every vehicle. had a population of crickets, one bok only had about 200 in it, just fyi , placing another order shortly. checking temps for best delivery success.
I came to the reptile show in Atlanta at the Convention Center on Camp Creek in September. My question is can I keep the crickets that I order in the cylinder container that you had them in ?