Raising microfeeders

[johns]

A while ago, Kruz36 had a great idea for raising micro crix for feeding to various inverts...



Can anyone tell me what this is?




I think you were supposed to buy 100 crickets, put them in a suitable enclosure with a source of moisture and food, along with a good moist place to lay eggs, let them do the cricket nasty, put the eggs on top of the refrigerator, and in a few days, you'd have micros galore...




Is this true? The only problem I see is that crix tend to put the, "ank" in "stank" and I was wondering if anybody else had a great or clever idea for raising microfeeders that are available easily available and don't take too long to rear?

 

[Wade]

When I need pinhead crickets, I start with adult females. If they're mature (with wings and long ovipositor) they've probably already mated so no need for males at that point. I'll select out 10-20 females and put them in a plastic container with about 1" moist sand (or vermiculite) in the bottom. I include a small dish of cricket food (to help prevent them from digging up each other's eggs and eating them). They will often start laying eggs immediately. After a couple days, I take the crix out and feed them off. If you keep the sand moist, they'll hatch in about two weeks at room temperature, less if you warm them up a bit. I like to seperate the egg laying container from the main bin because cricks are often egg cannibals.

If you keep millipedes (and I think you do ), you might have springtails as well. These can be usefull to feed to very small predators, they're smaller than pinheads or fruit flies. I often find them crawling on the undersides of the cork bark I have in with the millipedes. I hold a piece of this bark over the cage I'm feeding and brush the springtails in.

Wade