Hello all, I am fairly new to keeping crickets so I'm not sure what I might be doing wrong. When I first got the crickets about 2 weeks ago I was keeping them in a large Exo Terra cricket pen and feeding them Flukers Orange Cubes, and also was using paper towel as their bedding. They started smelling because of poor ventilation and dirty bedding so I moved them to a different pen, completely cleaned out the container. I didn't change anything except the bedding, which I switched to steel-cut oats as I had heard oatmeal bedding was good for keeping away smells and also a good source of food for them. I also moved them to a better ventilated area that was more temperature regulated. Before the bedding change I hadn't had any problem with them dying, having only found one or two dead at the time of cleaning them. It's been 3 days since then and I've found 3-5 dead every day. I'm not sure if they were just sickly beforehand or what, but I'm very confused and worried.
I think they only live a couple months? Were they full grown when you got them?
If you are going to try and keep crickets alive for more than a week, then you probably should at least Google "cricket breeding". and read about how they maintain them. There are some good articles out there, this is one article that helped me out..... http://www.wormman.com/breeding_crickets.cfm
However I'd give up on the cricket keepers they sell at pet stores. They are pretty useless. Just get a rubbermaid or sterilite storage box. Make sure it has glossy sides so they can't climb out. If the bottom is glossy then use some sandpaper to rough it up so they can walk. They do okay in high temps, so mine are in the garage with the tops off to give them ventilation and the smells are minimal if you keep trading out the old food for fresh. I mainly feed mine lettuce scraps and the peels from oranges and grapefruits that have some flesh on the inside. They also love the iguana pellets and gecko pellets.
I raise my own crickets, and it as much or more interesting than my toads.
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