- 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
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