# How do i stop crickets eating eachother?



## Chad Peace (Aug 21, 2016)

I bought crickets from the pet store to feed my 2 Ts and they just end up eating eachother, is there a way to prevent this?


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## cold blood (Aug 21, 2016)

Um, feed them....I always have a couple pieces of dog kibble in with my crickets.

Reactions: Like 1 | Agree 3


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## magicmed (Aug 21, 2016)

Yup just feed them. Foods gotta eat. As @cold blood said a couple pieces of kibble and maybe a carrot slice for water and you're gold


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## cold blood (Aug 21, 2016)

magicmed said:


> Yup just feed them. Foods gotta eat. As @cold blood said a couple pieces of kibble and maybe a carrot slice for water and you're gold


I actually keep a 2 liter bottle cap (filled with rocks) with water in with my crickets.   Whenever I first get them, you should see them pile in to get drinks.  I've literally never had a single one drown.

Reactions: Like 3


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## Aquarimax (Aug 22, 2016)

As others have said, both food and hydration are needed to keep cricket cannibalism down. 

That said, crickets will still cannibalize to some extent, even with all the food and water they need. 

I have been breeding crickets for a while, and they inevitably nibble on each other a bit. I still produce plenty of crickets to feed my pets, as long as I keep the crickets well fed and hydrated.


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## JumpingSpiderLady (Aug 22, 2016)

Don't use those gel foods.  They're junk.  Went into the pet store two weeks after buying 40 or so crickets and the cashier remembered me.  He was shocked mine were still alive and I didn't need more.  I told him, "You just gotta feed 'em actual food!"  I give mine fish food and carrots. Mist the side of thier home once or twice a day for them to drink.

Reactions: Like 1


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## Ceymann (Aug 22, 2016)

I have been using fish food, Apple slices and ground up rolled oats 
with good success.

Reactions: Informative 1


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## cold blood (Aug 22, 2016)

JumpingSpiderLady said:


> Don't use those gel foods.  They're junk.  Went into the pet store two weeks after buying 40 or so crickets and the cashier remembered me.  He was shocked mine were still alive and I didn't need more.  I told him, "You just gotta feed 'em actual food!"  I give mine fish food and carrots. Mist the side of thier home once or twice a day for them to drink.


With as dirty as they are, misting isn't an avenue I'd ever go down with crickets....I use water, most simply use lettuce.

Op, proper "cover" is also a good preventative measure, *if* you don't, put in an egg carton or two.



rokonbrak said:


> About 2 months ago my sub adult female A. Hentzi laid a sac.  After reaching out to a few trusted hobbyists, they all reassured me it would be a phantom sac & to toss it.  I couldn’t.  She carried it around with her everywhere.  After 50 days she started leaving it.  I snatched it & decided to open it, expecting dirt or infertile eggs.  Nope!!  Eggs with legs!!  Moving eggs with legs!!  I searched on here & saw a thread about keeping them in a container with a coffee filter suspended above water for humidity.  I didn’t expect any to survive.  After 2 weeks I have a decent amount of little ones starting to walk around!  1. What in the world am I going to do with these if they survive?  & 2. Omg how exciting!!  I’m a bit bummed that she is probably wild caught as I have never paired her & the vendor I got her from was one I reached out to & assured me it would be a phantom sac.  Plus, she’s rather small (just at 3 inches).  How long before I need to separate them? Picture to show how amazingly cute these little ones are & they already have tiny hairs!!!





tarantulas118 said:


> I never that they were able to produce or mate at 3 inches that’s crazy (also I love to see fellow Tarantula hobbyists in Missour)


I thought she was way too small too!  We’re in S. Illinois just outside of St. Louis.  I’ve heard Hentzi have crossed the River & have been seen in the Shawnee National Forrest.  I’d love to see them in “the wild”.



cold blood said:


> so much for sub-adult...haha...lets just say adult...hehe.
> 
> Glad you had success.    Another month pus and they will all blacken, dont worry, this is normal before molting....once they molt again, you can then re house them....start collecting condiment cups, they work perfect.    After they molt it will be another week or two before they start eating.    At this point, you can start selling them off, either yourself, of you can wholesale them to a seller all at once or in large bungles.


Thank you!  Think I should remove the bad eggs or just leave them until they start changing colors?  I did take out the dark eggs or ones that looked bad.  I mean the ones that just didn’t develop.

Reactions: Like 2 | Agree 1


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## truecreature (Aug 22, 2016)

In addition to keeping them well fed, give them as much room to get away from each other as you possibly can. Crickets in the wild are solitary animals, so being kept so crowded together is unnatural for them and probably why they die off if you so much as glance at them. Also, go through the cage each day to remove garbage like dead crickets and molts.

Good food, space, ventilation, and hygiene will do a lot for extending crickets' lives


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## Chad Peace (Aug 23, 2016)

Okay, thanks everyone i will give this a try


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## sschind (Aug 23, 2016)

I don't know about the gel food as I never used it (way too expensive) but I use the water gel quite a bit.  Buy it in bulk and its cheap and goes a long way.  I've found its much easier to control the humidity in the cages than simply throwing in wet veggies. I have a dish of water gel and most of the food I use is a dry concoction of my own making.  Most of my veggies and stuff like that goes to my roaches anyway.



Aquarimax said:


> As others have said, both food and hydration are needed to keep cricket cannibalism down.
> 
> That said, crickets will still cannibalize to some extent, even with all the food and water they need.
> 
> I have been breeding crickets for a while, and they inevitably nibble on each other a bit. I still produce plenty of crickets to feed my pets, as long as I keep the crickets well fed and hydrated.


I've given up on breeding crickets.  I have no problem getting them to breed and getting thousands of pin heads, and once they have molted 3 times or so they are very hardy but I lose about 95% of them in the first 2 molts so its not worth it.  Care to share anytips on how you get them past the first 2 molts.  I'm guessing my problem is a combination of temperature and humidity.


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## Chris LXXIX (Aug 23, 2016)

What work for me is this: I keep crickets, from medium to adults (the little and the millimeter ones are separate from those) into a XL KK, no substrate at all, those egg stuff for hide (that I change every week btw) and for food/water only fresh, well cleaned carrots and that cricket only fodder which I honestly I haven't a clue about the exact, proper, English name. Nothing else, loss to minimum.


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## Aquarimax (Aug 23, 2016)

sschind said:


> I've given up on breeding crickets.  I have no problem getting them to breed and getting thousands of pin heads, and once they have molted 3 times or so they are very hardy but I lose about 95% of them in the first 2 molts so its not worth it.  Care to share anytips on how you get them past the first 2 molts.  I'm guessing my problem is a combination of temperature and humidity.


I would be happy to share how I do it, hopefully something will help. I keep my cricket bin warm with a nocturnal reptile light, wattage varies with the season from 75-150. The hotspot (where I keep the eggcrate) gets up to the 90s F in the summer, mid 80s in winter. The cool side gets down to the mid 70s in the winter, and is usually 78-82 F in the summer. (I use a temp gun to check temps).

I live in a fairly dry climate, and my cricket bin is well ventilated. I make no particular effort to monitor or regulate humidity in the container as a whole. I am sure the water crystals, as well as daily misting of the coco fiber in the laying and hatching containers, contribute to the humidity. 

The nursery chamber within the main bin is kept on the cool side of the bin. As for the adults, I always provide water crystals. The staple food is the chick grower pellets I use for our chickens. I supplement with Omega One fish food pellets, and frequent bits of various fruits and vegetables.

For shelter, I provide paper towel tubes, ripped into approximately 2 inch lengths and crushed so that they are mostly flat.

I have to make sure that there aren't too many older crickets in the nursery chamber, or they'll start attacking the tiny juveniles.

Every week or so, (usually when I notice a lot of hatchlings) switch the laying container into the nursery bin, and dump out the older coconut fiber from the nursery container and put a container of fresh coco fiber back into the main bin as a laying container.

I haven't noticed an age at which hatchlings die off. There just seem to be plenty of them all the time, unless my light bulb fails, or if I forget to switch laying substrate into the nursery chamber. Those have been the only setbacks I've experienced. Is there anything I am doing that seems radically different from what you are doing? Hopefully I haven't missed anything.

Reactions: Like 1


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