So I just hatched some crickets...

[BillieJean]

...in my regalis's terrarium.

A few weeks ago I threw a cricket into its enclosure, and got confused when it started burrowing. I eventually noticed its oviposition tube and realized it was laying eggs. I didn't really want to rehouse regalis, but I sealed ventilation holes with tape as a precaution (good thing, too, because they can climb the plastic walls just fine!).

After about a week, I figured maybe the temperature or humidity wasn't right for the eggs and they had died, so I threw in a couple isopods hoping they'd eat the remains. Earlier today I saw the regalis (~3 inches) spazzing a little bit as if it was eating something, but thought it was just cleaning itself. Later I threw in a cricket to finally feed it after its molt this past weekend and noticed the little pinheads all over the enclosure.

So my question is, is it safe [for my T] to leave a 3" regalis, a medium 3/4" cricket, and about 50-100 pinhead crickets in the same enclosure? The enclosure is fairly large—about 5x5x7 inches.

I just noticed that the regalis is in fact eating the pinheads, so I'm guessing they won't be mistaking it for food before it's full. Would the medium cricket possibly eat the pinheads as well? Is there any chance of the crickets puncturing its exoskeleton? As I mentioned, it molted 4-5 days ago, so I'm hopeful that its exoskeleton has had a chance to harden by now.

[BatGirl]

First - avoid the issue: If the fracking female cricket can't find moist substrate to lay the eggs in, then the eggs it does lay will dry up and die before hatching - just requires a little moisture though and those ba$tard tiny things are everywhere! They won't necessarily 'physically' harm your pet, but they will cause stress and a mess in the water dish when they die in it.

Second: Best to do what I do and that is either feed it only male crickets (btw - rip one of the male cricket's legs off and they can't make noise - I usually feed the males to my copes gray tree frogs - the noisy buggers make noise in there and it only draws attention to them, heh, heh - yummy!) or snip off the female cricket's oviposition tube as short as possible and it will have problems even laying eggs (this is what I do mostly, and combined with dry substrate, I haven't had this problem to re-occur).

Good luck!

[Londoner]

I've found the best thing to do is put another waterdish in. The pinheads will need water and usually drown in the dishes. It's a bit of a pain to keep replacing the dishes when they're full of drowned crix, but it's only for a little while and it works.