How to Make Your Own Cricket Colony
There are a number of reasons to raise crickets. Crickets are a staple in the diets of many pets, including lizards, geckos and spiders. Some people raise crickets for profit. Others to use crickets for fishing. With a birth rate of thousands every two to three weeks and a low overhead, raising crickets can be a good business. Because the mortality rate is so high for the cricket young, called pinheads, a great deal of care must be taken in raising them.
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Things You'll Need
- 3 large plastic tubs or fishtanks
- Sponges
- Toilet paper tubes
- Fast food drink carriers
- Substrate or soil
- Fruit
- Potato peelings
- Heating pad
Instructions
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Prepare the first container for the adult-sized crickets you will be stocking to begin the breeding process. It's best to purchase crickets that haven't reached full adulthood yet, as they don't live very long to begin with, anyway. If you are using a fish tank, the crickets won't be able to scale the sides to escape. If you are using a larger plastic container, you will need to cut a hole in the center of the lid about 3 inches wide and about 6 inches long. Hot glue a wire mesh screen to the inside of the lid and let the glue dry.
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Line the bottom of the container with about 2 inches of vermiculite, a commonly available mineral. This helps keep the bottom of the container dry. Clean and replace the vermiculite about every three months.
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3
Fill a small, clean, disposable container with damp topsoil that is fertilizer- and pesticide-free. Pack the soil tightly and let it sit for 12 hours. After the soil has had 12 hours to just slightly dry off, place the container into the fish tank or plastic tub. Some use loose soil for their female crickets to lay in, but that can get messy. This is your egg container.
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Feed crickets orange slices, melon, lettuce, apples and potato peelings. Grind up some dry cat or dog food and place it into the cricket colony, as well. Crickets need a high-protein diet, and although cricket food is sold in pet stores, it isn't necessary to purchase it.
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Mist the egg container daily to just dampen the surface, but not soak it. The egg container can be placed in with the crickets for a week at a time. Transfer the egg container to the second fish tank after the week is up and replace with a new egg container.
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Place a heating pad under a portion of the second fish tank or container. It should heat an area of about one-fourth of the total tank. Another option is the use of a lamp with a 75-watt bulb. Cricket eggs need to be heated to about 80 degrees to obtain a good hatch rate, but condensation can accumulate and drown the pinheads if you aren't careful.
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Add some lettuce to the second tank, along with some ground-up dog or cat food in a couple of corners. Place about three sheets of toilet paper in the tank, touching the soil and the fish-tank bottom. Add some toilet paper rolls, a paper towel roll and an egg crate from an 18-egg container. Wait one week and add more lettuce.
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Remove the second egg container from the first aquarium and set it in the third fish tank or plastic tub. This should be done after two weeks of the first eggs hatching. By this time, many of the female crickets should be dead in the first fish tank. Remove the dead bodies and old food to prevent bad odors. Clean out the tank and use the first one as the colony home. Egg crates, paper towels and toilet paper tubes provide good places for the crickets to hide.
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Tips & Warnings
Keep the soil in the egg containers moist.
Feed the crickets regularly and clean out old food.
Keep adult crickets out of the pinhead container, as adult crickets will eat their young.
Male crickets have two prongs in their tail, but females have three, with the third one being the ovipositor, which is her egg-laying device.
References
- Photo Credit cricket image by Gail Oswald from Fotolia.com
