Survival of the Pinhead!

We're trying to start our own colony of crickets and have hatched out thousands of little pinheads from one breed box. We place our commercially bought 1000 count of adult crickets into a 29 gallon tank with a heat pad under a screened Tupperware container full of moist sphagnum moss. The adults go to town laying their eggs in the breed box and when we feed off all of the adults, about a week later, we put the breed box into a 10 gallon tank with a heat pad. The pinheads hatch about 4 days after putting the breed box in the 10 gallon. We put dry cricket feed on the floor towards one corner and pieces of cut up apple and collard green stems in the other corner for water. We put in egg crate for them to climb on. They spread the cricket grain everywhere and they are shedding and some are dying.

The ambient temperature in the tank is 87F. How do we remove the dead crickets and their shells from the bottom of the tank without killing all the babies?

I breed my own crickets too. I have found that there is really no need to remove the shells and dead crickets as long as you are keeping your humidity levels fairly low. The low humidity will allow the dead crickets to dry out rather than decay. It will also help prevent mold growth which could kill your crickets.

Jamie

If they are still alive and breeding dont worry about the dead ones unless you want crickets jumping out.

We have been able to successfully keep the adult crickets alive since we started. We have noticed that one thing that makes a huge impact on the survival rate of the adult crickets is whether we keep the bottom of their tank clean or not. If we take out the dead bodies, sheds and poop, the crickets last a lot longer. If this is true of the adults, it should be true for the babies too, right?

Does anyone know how to take out the debris from the bottom of the pinhead tank so their survival rate will increase as well? Or does everyone just leave all of that stuff in there until they get older and easier to transfer from tank to tank?

Have you tried setting egg crates in the tank for the little ones to climb into?
We do this with our roaches... That way, all we have to do is carefully lift the eggcrates (glue a few together) without disturbing the bugs much and tilt the bin so that the mess on the bottom falls to one side. Give any bugs that got spooked a few minutes to hide in the eggcrates again and either scoop or hand-vac the mess out. You may get a few bugs, but as long as you take the trash bag outside asap to avoid escapees - it should work well...