Cricket colony? Help needed

[Stopdroproll]

How do you deal with noisiness? I prefer roaches because they don't jump all over the place. Had to take extra precautions so they don't escape.

 

[pwilson5]

mine dont make any noise yet... dont only males "chirp"? if so i might have all females.. .which would explain the lack of eggs

 

[gromgrom]

The same for me. I actually have in a 20 galons tank more than a thousand of brown crickets (acheta domesticus) and I don't have any smell problem. The only precaution against the smell is the good ventilation and the cleaning of crickets poop and the change of the water crystals (agar agar) and food, once a week.

For food I prepare a dry mixture composed by:
4 parts of bran
3 parts of oats
2 parts of tropical fish food
2 parts of milk in powder
2 parts of food for rabbits (ground)
1 part of croquettes for cats (ground)

and occasionaly apple, potato, orange, carrot, Roman rocket.

roaches take a head of lettuce, only throwing old lettuce out every 2 days. they dont stink, they dont make noise, and they dont cost more than the males and females to start. only poop to clean up, and they dont eat each other

just get over your fear and save cash. but 2 bucks a week isnt much anyway, so stick with that.

 

[nhdjoseywales]

Well breeding them would just take time and no money. I know 2 dollars a month is dirt cheap, but wouldn't zero a month be cheaper lol. Anyway I guess it's a venture I'm gonna try and take. I'm really not concerned about profiting off of them, even though I'm gonna try. I just like the idea that if I ever need crickets, I just walk out my back door and grab some instead of driving to wal-mart and paying for them. And that's 2 dollars per month I have saved. Anyway I have found a rubbermaid container to use, what's next?

you seem to think these crickets will consume no food and not require anything to live in. as stated, food costs money and you will have to get egg crates for them to live in or they will just die. crickets easily die from stress and as stated they tend to be cannibalistic and in general a pain in the butt to raise compared to roaches. do what you want, but i have a feeling in a month you will be thinking "they told me so"

 

[nhdjoseywales]

Time, food, egg crates, substrate...all those things cost money too. If you're feeding a single tarantula (or just a few) you may as well just buy them, it'll be cheaper and save you a lot of time. Look for someplace better than wal-mart to buy them. Usually pet stores are cheaper.

On a side note, crickets are so much more disgusting than roaches. Crickets stink like crazy, they bite (you or your T's), they eat each other, they're loud, and they die incredibly easy. Did I mention that they stink? Roaches do none of those things.

here in TN bait shops and wal mart are cheaper than the 10-11 cents each they want at petco or petsmart. wal mart is 2 bucks or so for a tube of at least 100-200 crickets. i would guess bait shops are similarly priced but since wal mart is across the street i dont know. the only down side to wal mart is that from about nov-early march they stop carrying then and you are forced to mail order or get them from the more expensive pet shops.
and yes they stink to high heaven if you dont keep the containers clean, which with small crickets is a pain in the butt since you have to sort out the tiny babies from their shed skins and poop without squishing half of them. also, if you have cats, you have to keep the containers covered or the cats like to hop over in them and munch the crickets or just kidnap a couple to play with on the floor. so there you now have more added costs and work making a screen lid for the rubbermaid since without ventilation the entire colony quickly dies.

oddly the cats dont seem interested in my dubias and i dont really have to do anything to them except toss some scraps and water crystals in and maybe rehouse them once a year or so

 

[gromgrom]

i wish my walmart sold them