whats a good set up for crickets?

Could everyone please tell me what there set up is like for keeping live crickets. Im going to start feeding live crickets to my crested, but would like more information about how to take care of them properly. Thaks everyone. Julie

Depending on how many you're going to be keeping (ie, how many mouths are you feeding?), then it would change the appropriate size of enclosure for your crickets.

I use a rubbermaid container that is about 12"w x 16"deep x 16"high. You will need something about this height because the crickets can jump pretty high. I cut a large hole in the original lid, and then put metal window screen over top. This is to keep humidity down, because humidity can kill them easily.

In the enclosure I keep sections of torn up egg carton for them to live and crawl on. This gives them more suface area to live on, and I find the more egg carton I have, the longer/better they live. As a water source, use vegetables that are cut up into large chunks. The normal vegetable is carrot, but you can use squash, cucumber, apples, almost anything. You should also leave a dish of gutload (cricket food) in the enclosure so that they can have full bellies when your crested eats them. This gives your crested a better nutritional value.

I hope this helps, let me know if you have any other questions!

I bought 1000 + crickets at a time. I kept them in a large tub ~60 gal. Just like HerpAddict I cut the top out and replaced it with metal screen. I used a soldering iron to melt the screen into the plastic all around the edge. They can't be kept in moist conditions or they will die.

They need as much hiding space as possible because overcrowding is stressful and they will die. I would put a horizontal stack of 5 egg crates separated by a piece of cardboard on one end. A couple additional crates were leaned against the walls of the tub for vertical hiding. I also put a couple of cardboard tubes in. The crickets in the tubes could be shook out into a jar for feeding. The other end of the tub was for the food and water. I used no substrate, just the bare bottom of the tub.

Food was a dry powdered mix of poultry mash without antibiotics or growth additives, powdered egg, wheat germ, powdered alfalfa leaves, dry milk and occasionally other powdered plant based ingredients.

For water I used cricket crystals and pieces of succulent fruits and vegetables. All food and water was kept in shallow dishes. These had to be replaced daily. For the really tiny crickets I arranged sphagnum moss and flat rocks around the dishes so they could climb in and out.

When available fresh green alfalfa and dandelion greens were very popular! They'd polish them off before evening.

Once a week I would remove everything, dump out all the feces, shed exoskeletons and dead bodies, and wash the tub with dilute bleach and soap. Rinse well after using soap.

The egg crates were replaced about once a month. New ones would come with every order.

Feed them well, give them plenty of room, keep them dry and keep everything clean.

One last comment. Buy sizes smaller than you will need. If your cricket husbandry is good they will continue to grow. If you need all sizes, you will have a more continuous supply if the population is large enough to allow a portion of the smaller ones to grow before being fed out.

It does matter who you buy from. You will have greater success and fewer disappointments if you start out with clean, well nourished, healthy insects.

Many pet shops only "feed" potato. This is not enough nourishment to support healthy insects. Many pet shops are also neglectful about the cleanliness of their colonies. This disposes the crickets to disease. Neither of these factors supports a good start to keeping a supply at home.

That is a 90qt. with screen on the ends and the lid has a hole cut in it that is about 40% of the lid, then covered in screen as well. It is very easy to clean, has great ventilation and I have very few die offs.

Thank you so much you guys are great, however I have one crested gecko, maybe getting another in early november. So were talking small amount of crickets.

In that case a plastic cricket keeper would work fine. They probably sell them wherever you buy your crickets, along with small jars of cricket cubes and gut load.