# Odorless Breeding of Crickets



## JeromeTabuzo (Dec 18, 2013)

Here is a secret to an odorless cricket farm.
Things you will need:
-container
-Scotch tape
-soil / compost
-Crickets
-Food for crickets
-half softdrink bottle
1.Buy a tank or container where you can contain the crickets , and a lid which can contain moisture (a few drilled homes might do)
2.Get moist soil or compost 
3.Fill the tank atleast 1-2 inches of soil (this are the ones that prevent a foul odor as they decay the dead crickets , frass and etc.)
4.Then add a bowl for food to avoid molds
5.Then add a suitable hiding place or cut a softdrink bottle into half and place on half in the container
6.Place a tape around the tank or container to prevent escaping of  pinhead crickets which you are gonna have
7.Buy your crickets , i suggest buying only females for they are likely pregnant
8.Then place food in the bowl and change if it rots
9.Then add your crickets.
10.Wait for 2 weeks to see the baby crickets
11.Remove the female crickets after one week , then transfer to another container to breed.
12.Mist the tank everday.
heres my setup:


theres a tape around the container , my phone wasnt able to capture it.
Any feedbacks , comments and questions will be appreciated 

Happy Odorless Cricket Breeding!!!

Reactions: Like 1


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## Galapoheros (Dec 18, 2013)

I kind of do it like that, I cover the bottom with soil like that.  The only smell I get sometimes is an ammonia smell when frass builds up faster than it breaks down as they grow and eat more.  I use egg crates for hiding but I think curled bark would better and would help keep the ammonia smell down a lot.  The cardboard egg crates absorb moisture when it's wet and can smell bad even with no crickets or roaches!  Since it's just me here, I don't worry about it haha.


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## JeromeTabuzo (Dec 18, 2013)

Galapoheros said:


> I kind of do it like that, I cover the bottom with soil like that.  The only smell I get sometimes is an ammonia smell when frass builds up faster than it breaks down as they grow and eat more.  I use egg crates for hiding but I think curled bark would better and would help keep the ammonia smell down a lot.  The cardboard egg crates absorb moisture when it's wet and can smell bad even with no crickets or roaches!  Since it's just me here, I don't worry about it haha.


use a half softdrink bottle instead of a card board egg crate  to avoid smelling


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## Galapoheros (Dec 18, 2013)

They tend to grasp to things while molting though, plastic is too slippery.  Do you know what species of cricket you have?


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## JeromeTabuzo (Dec 19, 2013)

Galapoheros said:


> They tend to grasp to things while molting though, plastic is too slippery.  Do you know what species of cricket you have?


Field crickets


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## viper69 (Dec 19, 2013)

What makes this an odorless setup ??


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## JeromeTabuzo (Dec 19, 2013)

viper69 said:


> What makes this an odorless setup ??


The soil decomposes the frass and etc, which avoids stinky smell , a dish to avoid molds , and a plastic bottle instead of a egg carton , as egg cartons go moist and moldy.  , when you try to smell the setup it doesnt smell that  bad.


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## Introvertebrate (Dec 19, 2013)

Nice work jeromeetabuzo.  I just wanted to warn you that any second now, someone will hop on here and tell you to switch to roaches.  Pretty much any cricket thread gets turned in that direction. :biggrin:

Reactions: Like 1


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## Spepper (Dec 19, 2013)

I like this idea.  If I ever need enough crickets that just breeding them would be way better than buying them for my needs I hope I'll remember this.  It sounds like it would work great! :clap:

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## Galapoheros (Dec 19, 2013)

Did you catch the parent crickets yourself?


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## Tenodera (Dec 19, 2013)

When I bred Gryllus field crickets I also used soil and they did exceptionally well. 
Right now I'm not convinced this would be an automatic fix for Acheta house cricket breeders. Because so many of them die and rot no matter what you do for them...


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## Introvertebrate (Dec 19, 2013)

I've seen people remove the egg/soil container, and put it in a second enclosure specifically for raising the baby crickets.  In his case, the original enclosure is for the babies, and he puts the adults in a second enclosure after they've laid eggs.

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## Galapoheros (Dec 19, 2013)

Tenodera said:


> When I bred Gryllus field crickets I also used soil and they did exceptionally well.
> Right now I'm not convinced this would be an automatic fix for Acheta house cricket breeders. Because so many of them die and rot no matter what you do for them...


Yip!, sure agree there.  I raise Gryllus now, I gave the house cricket too many chances.  It went well one Summer but that's it.  The Gryllus are bigger and better, including the "crazy reds" imo, the young pedes take them down with no problem over here.


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## JeromeTabuzo (Dec 19, 2013)

Galapoheros said:


> Did you catch the parent crickets yourself?


nope i bought like 6 females from a store and placed them in the container and after two weeks they had that amount of babies.

---------- Post added 12-19-2013 at 03:05 PM ----------




Galapoheros said:


> Yip!, sure agree there.  I raise Gryllus now, I gave the house cricket too many chances.  It went well one Summer but that's it.  The Gryllus are bigger and better, including the "crazy reds" imo, the young pedes take them down with no problem over here.


have u tried feeding lots of fish food for them? , this is what i do and none of my field crickets die.

---------- Post added 12-19-2013 at 03:06 PM ----------




Introvertebrate said:


> Nice work jeromeetabuzo.  I just wanted to warn you that any second now, someone will hop on here and tell you to switch to roaches.  Pretty much any cricket thread gets turned in that direction. :biggrin:


For me crickets are easier to breed , they mature faster and give birth faster. I breed my crickets to feed my jumping spiders. I also own roaches , but it takes so long to give birth.

Reactions: Like 1


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## Introvertebrate (Dec 20, 2013)

jeromeetabuzo said:


> For me crickets are easier to breed , they mature faster and give birth faster. I breed my crickets to feed my jumping spiders. I also own roaches , but it takes so long to give birth.


Yup.  People complain about a cricket's short lifespan, but feeders with short life cycles have their advantages.  It only takes 2 weeks to get a culture up and running.


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## JeromeTabuzo (Dec 20, 2013)

Introvertebrate said:


> Yup.  People complain about a cricket's short lifespan, but feeders with short life cycles have their advantages.  It only takes 2 weeks to get a culture up and running.


Agreed. It would also have an advantage if we have many critters to feed.


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## Galapoheros (Dec 20, 2013)

It's the "house cricket"(Acheta domesticus) that often dies when people try to raise them, the field cricket(Gryllus) is much more hardy.  And when Gryllus do die, the others often eat it so it doesn't stay there, rot and smell.  But I wonder if Acheta domesticus is called a "field cricket" over there.  If you have a Acheta domesticus babies, you will probably have problems later.  And if you don't have about 100 things to feed, you may end up cooking a bunch of them haha, they also make a lot of noise when adults.  I feed the ones over here fish food(two diff kinds), greens, organic dog food and other things, no they don't die.  It's Acheta domesticus that is kind of a problem with smells and dying, not so much Gryllus.  Do you have pictures of the adults?


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## JeromeTabuzo (Dec 20, 2013)

Ok so here's the pic of the adults:


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## Galapoheros (Dec 20, 2013)

Oh yeah, that's a field cricket for sure, what are you going to feed them to?


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## JeromeTabuzo (Dec 20, 2013)

Galapoheros said:


> Oh yeah, that's a field cricket for sure, what are you going to feed them to?


pinheads goes to my jumping spiders , and male adults will be fed to my fire belly toads , and the females are kept to breed. Extras are gonna be sold.
ive been feeding my crickets dog food , fish food , potatoes.


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## JeromeTabuzo (Dec 29, 2013)

jeromeetabuzo said:


> pinheads goes to my jumping spiders , and male adults will be fed to my fire belly toads , and the females are kept to breed. Extras are gonna be sold.
> ive been feeding my crickets dog food , fish food , potatoes.


i mean male adult crickets will be fed , and female adult crickets are kept to breed , and extra crickets will be sold.


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## JeromeTabuzo (Jul 28, 2014)

Bumping for more people to read


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## dementedlullaby (Jul 28, 2014)

I read that black field crickets are quite a bit more vicious compared to A. domesticus. Especially males can give a nasty bite I hear. Personally I hate A. domesticus. They are horrid creatures and beat on each other regardless of space. 

I've taken to feeding my animals the new banded crickets that seem to be readily available here. Gryllodes sigillatus is their scientific name. They seem much more hardy (as long as you don't keep them in the cold), don't beat on each other and breed like mad. I keep having to move my little soil cups out so the males don't eat the eggs. I'll have hundreds of pinheads in a couple weeks when they hatch...Oh god! lol   The only downside is these suckers can jump. If you thought A. domesticus were jumpy buggers...Yeah, you ain't seen nuttin' yet! My beardie refuses to even eat them unless I tong feed him. They're wayyyy fast. Shouldn't be a problem for an invert though.


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## Galapoheros (Jul 29, 2014)

The field crickets will bite if you give the a chance, more a surprise than it hurts.  I've fed literally 1000's of them to Ts, pedes and scorpions with bites never causing damage I could see.  With scorpions, if the jaws give them extra problems they give the crickets another sting and wait.


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## JeromeTabuzo (Jul 29, 2014)

i got bitten once by it. @Galapoheros can you help me on my centipede thread? its on the myriapods section thnx


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## Akai (Jul 29, 2014)

JeromeTabuzo said:


> For me crickets are easier to breed , they mature faster and give birth faster. I breed my crickets to feed my jumping spiders. I also own roaches , but it takes so long to give birth.


Have you tried Blatta Lateralis?  Small enough for jumping spiders and they are prolific breeders.


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## JeromeTabuzo (Jul 29, 2014)

I prefer crickets 2 weeks you have many pinheads!  B.lats egg case hatch within months

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk

---------- Post added 07-29-2014 at 04:59 AM ----------

Anyway i hav b.latss here too but i feed them to my scorpions

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk


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## Akai (Jul 29, 2014)

Just noticed you're in the Philippines.  There's a couple of tarantulas native to your country that I am looking into.  :


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## JeromeTabuzo (Jun 6, 2015)

bumping for more people to read


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## sschind (Jun 6, 2015)

one thing I noticed when I used to catch wild field crickets is that they chirp at a much younger age.  The tiny ones have a very soft chirp to them and when you have a few hundred of them in a tub it sounds like a continuous very faint trilling sound.  Its kind of calming in a way.  Not at all  like the incessant chirping of that one single male that gets loose and somehow finds its way into the back corner of your bedroom closet.

I've always avoided the adults because I have heard hey were more agressive but I may look into them.  Since you have the dirt in there have you considered adding a colony of isopods to help with the detritus  Breeding the A domsticus is very easy but as the OP pointed out there can be a smell issue and my biggest problem was getting the thousands of pinheads to survive to a size where anything I had could eat them.

I love the hardiness of the banded crickets and the fact that their chirp is quieter (if I recall correctly from the few times I had them) but they don't get nearly as big so that is a drawback when you have big predators.  I never tried to breed them but I may give it a go.  Living in an apartment with neighbors who look for things to complain about makes things more difficult however.

I wish I had access to a heated garage or something, I think I would try breeding just about any type of feeder invert I could think of.  In some ways it is almost as satisfying as breeding the pets we keep.


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