Mass cricket die off

[Lucky123]

I haven’t lately I noticed about 1/4 to 1/3 of my crickets dead upside down, these were all pretty young crickets, the only thing that has changed is that I recently introduced about 30 new crickets. Was there some disease that spread?

 

[mellow]

Well that doesn't sound good, I would not feed your pets with those crickets, they might have some kind of parasyte or something, unfortunately you might have to kill them all and get new crickets.

 

[Lucky123]

unfortunately you might have to kill them all and get new crickets.

Ok, but how to go about doing that, I can't just put them in the freezer, my mom would flip. Crushing all of their heads would be incredibly time consuming, I could evaporate alcohol, or just throw em in a plastic bag and leave them on hot pavement for a few hours or so, but that seems kinda cruel.

 

[mellow]

Ok, but how to go about doing that, I can't just put them in the freezer, my mom would flip. Crushing all of their heads would be incredibly time consuming, I could evaporate alcohol, or just throw em in a plastic bag and leave them on hot pavement for a few hours or so, but that seems kinda cruel.

You could evaporate alcohol, or if you have a place to burn stuff you can burn them, maybe you could even spray bleach on them that would probably work too, just try something that will most likely kill them all, I would go with fire.

 

[EpicEpic]

were the new crickets bigger than the old ones?

 

[Lucky123]

were the new crickets bigger than the old ones?

Most were smaller

 

[Lucky123]

Upon closer inspection I realized that they are infested with mites, but there are no mites on the living ones only the dead, so they must be dying for some other reason and the mites are just eating the dead stuff.

 

[Lucky123]

I’ve done the job, the crickets are dead I feel bad for them. I got new crickets these ones also have mites but I don’t think they are parasitic because they are acting normal. They look like tiny white specks of dust on the crickets, are these safe to feed to my inverts?

 

[Ferrachi]

I'm sure you've done it but just in case, make sure you thoroughly clean out the cricket enclosure and remove anything in there that could have mites attached