Cricket killers

Normski2020uk

Arachnolord
Old Timer
Joined
Nov 18, 2005
Messages
603
Im possting this on the other invertibrate site as well. I noticed my Crickets were not as noisey as normal, infact silent. When i dug all their hidesnout, i found several, caterpiller like things feeding on several cricket corpses. The bigest was the length of an adult cricket, they were dark brown with brown to dark ginger hair all over, hard shell, they tried to burrow when i saw them. Any idea what they were, and where they came from, they desimated my coloney.
 

tyrel

Arachnobaron
Old Timer
Joined
Oct 24, 2005
Messages
498
Those sound like dermestid beetle larve. The are sometimes mixed in with cricket orders. They don't kill crickets, but they would eat ones that are already dead. They are often used in cleaning flesh off skeletons for scientific mounts. They are harmless to crickets, I would guesss they died for some other reason.
 

thisgal

Arachnoknight
Old Timer
Joined
Feb 9, 2006
Messages
254
I get those occasionally, and although I've been constantly reassured that they are harmless to live crix, I'm skeptical. Every time I go buy two dozen crix, and they're pretty much all dead within 48 hours for no apparent reason, I'll find one or two of these. They're ugly little bugs that will turn into beetles (if you can keep yourself from ending their lives prematurely, that is...{D ). They're one of the reasons I started just putting a dozen crix directly into my scorps' cage, with some food in the corner.
 

LeilaNami

Arachnoking
Old Timer
Joined
Jun 8, 2006
Messages
2,164
Well...are you seperating the dead from the surviving? The dead crickets create methane gas which will kill of the others.
 

Normski2020uk

Arachnolord
Old Timer
Joined
Nov 18, 2005
Messages
603
Never had a problem with dead crickets. Ive been breeding them on and off for over a year now, and i find the dead get eaten by the others. In fact they are quiet feroshious when its about food, ive seen them strip a pinky in less than an hour. The only time ive had mass dead, is when i had an infestation of mites killing them off, and this incident, but i was leting the collony run down, so i could get som new blood in. So is it possible that the number balance changed and the number of these scavangers out numberd the Crickets, and they droped down the food chain???
 

Staley

Arachnobaron
Old Timer
Joined
May 3, 2005
Messages
487
You should be careful because if you have a tarantula that is sluffing they could eat it. Or a scorpion
 

Normski2020uk

Arachnolord
Old Timer
Joined
Nov 18, 2005
Messages
603
Yeh i know, Im very carfull with my Ts and Scorps, all my Scorps are adults, and i have 2 Roses still got a long way to go
 

Smokum

Arachnopeon
Joined
Jan 7, 2007
Messages
22
Only my last box of crickets had those caterpilar like things in it .
I´ve given them to my Jumping spiders :p . At first they didn´t like them ,
but after 2 days I saw my jumpers eating those cats {D
 
Top