Getting the most from your cricket money

OneSickPuppy

Arachnobaron
Old Timer
Joined
Jun 3, 2005
Messages
526
Im noticing a lot of people asking about feeding young scorpions. Personally, I feed my young full sized adult crickets and they take them down efficiently alone and some such as my B. jacksoni even hunt in groups I learned tonight. I missed the pic of two jacksonis going to town on a cricket from both ends, but caught a good shot on a few of the others coming to join the feast. Too bad they got nervous when I started hitting them with the flash.

Back onto my topic though ...

With 31 scorpions, the food bill is starting to add up. It wont be long before I find it cheaper to buy in bulk and keep raise a few. But for now im only purchasing 2-3 dozen a week. 2 weeks ago I noticed my emp tank was loaded with pinheads. With that find and adding up the bill I started reading into breeding crickets. I started to get an idea on a system that would allow for a little stretching of my food bill for no additional cost.

I took a medium round plastic critter keeper (not sure of the name or make but any plastic pet keeper is perfect for this) and added 1" of moistened peat. From there I just drop full sized mature adult crickets and ill be danged ... they do the work naturally. Withi 30 minutes there were 5 females laying eggs in the substrate. The 2 crickets in my emp tank produced at least 75-100 pinheads on their own. Im just going to wait 4-6 days to see how many I get from 2 dozen (I think I counted 15 females and 8 males). Im not going to be stuck with 500 chirping adults, and a smell to offend people at 25 paces. Why not stretch the buck and provide some small crickets for my smaller guys for a small setup fee.

Plastic Container - $4.99
Cricket Gel - $3.99 (but i got it free from a friend and im going to buy the dried stuff to save money ... something like $2 to make a gallon if i continue)
Cricket Food - $3.99 (i think ... got it for free too)

For those of us that really hate crickets, what better thought than keeping them to serve your purposes from death row. If someone can post them for me, ive got pics if anyone wants to see how easy they go to work for you. Ill update this thread as my pinheads hatch and grow a bit if anyone has any interest in my cheap experiment on "goverment assistance for scorpions".

BTW ... no better time to gutload your crickets
 

Arlius

Arachnodemon
Old Timer
Joined
Mar 22, 2005
Messages
684
I think they take more like 2 weeks to hatch. Make sure they dont dry out and keep em warmer, like 80 F
 

OneSickPuppy

Arachnobaron
Old Timer
Joined
Jun 3, 2005
Messages
526
got em in the warm dark closet along with some of my scorpions. its around 85 to 90 degrees 20 hours a day ... gets cooler when i go watch my scorps and take pics everyday.

I believe Ive been reading 4-6 days to hatch, but I could be remembering wrong. Ill go look it up again tonight.
 

Fluid Filter

Arachnoknight
Old Timer
Joined
Apr 13, 2005
Messages
245
Offer still stands sickpuppy jaw79l84@yahoo.com
I dont bother with breeding. I buy crickets from a place that only charges 1 dollar for 25 and they often don't count, just heap em in. I have been considering breeding roaches but they're a bit expensive to start.
 

OneSickPuppy

Arachnobaron
Old Timer
Joined
Jun 3, 2005
Messages
526
pics on the way .... so is a standing order for crickets at that price. I can only get full sized adults at one store and they charge 99 cents for a dozen. At a petco where a manager is a friend and we talk small pets, i get 15-17 for a dollar but they arent quite adults.
 

Empi

Arachnobaron
Old Timer
Joined
Jul 18, 2005
Messages
542
I get pinheads in my emp tank all the time. If the heat is up around 90 they hatch in about a week. I let them all molt twice and then I take them out. I did the breading thing and I got tired of having to keep the conditions just right for a bunch of dumb crickets. So I just let them do there thing in my emp tank. I don't even feed the things, they just eat the moss that grows in the tank.When I get the female crickets from the store they lay eggs within a minute of going in the tank. I also have two or three little pedes in the tank that I caught in the yard and they come out and eat the little crickets. They must like it in there cuz they just had a ton of babys too.
 

ScorpDude

Arachnoangel
Old Timer
Joined
Mar 27, 2004
Messages
948
by the way, crickets take about 4months to reach maturity, so they are going to grow fairly slowly.

To keep costs down don't buy cricket food, just buy the cheapest dog buscuits you possibly can. The crickets eat these (I add some cornflakes n all, coz I'm nice :D ) and save you money. Also, don't buy the gel stuff, but agar agar available from chinese health food shops. Its pretty much the same, only its dirt cheap, and you can add nutrients to it to make it more nutritious. Actually, its the stuff they use in labs, they add nutrients and grow bacteria on it.

Just helping you save money.

The hotter it is the faster they reproduce and grow (but the harder they are to catch) until you reach about 95-100, where it starts to have the opposite effect. Aim for about 90 for optimum conditions.

Make sure you keep the conditions you actually keep the crickets in bone dry, you don't want mites in there, trust me, they can devistate a collection and they spread like anything
 

OneSickPuppy

Arachnobaron
Old Timer
Joined
Jun 3, 2005
Messages
526
uhhhh.... chinese health food shop? Dont know how to find one of those.
 

eatinmachine

Arachnopeon
Joined
Jan 1, 2005
Messages
48
another way to save money is to feed your crix fish food buy one of those huge containers and feed it to them (it is what you are alot of times supposed to use to gutload) or use those individual jelly containers from resteraunts I take them a lot and give them to my crix let them eat their fill for about 3 days and just throw it out.
 
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