Quote Originally Posted by Julia View Post
I have been trying to breed brown crickets for months now. The weather recently warmed up and now all of a sudden I have hundreds of pin head sized crickets! Problem is they have been the same size for 2 weeks. I have them in a 10 gallon tank on coco husk. Plenty of food, veggies, and cricket water gel. They have many places to climb/hide, warm temps (80's) and even a UVB lamp. (I had an extra lying around.) How do I make them grow? How many weeks before they are considered full grown?
80 is okay but they'll still take a while to grow at that rate. Pinheads prefer hotter temperatures. I would see if I can maybe get it to the 90s.

As for how many weeks before they are full grown, I can't really answer that. Mine seem to grow at different rates. I notice crickets that aren't yet adults don't have wings, thus you can still see their white and black striped bodies. (We're talking about house crickets right?)

V (Pictures of crickets that are getting big but aren't quite adults.)


Another way to tell is females tend to have a long, tail like thing, coming out of their ,er rear when they molt for their final time. Males don't and they chirp.

V Here's a picture of one of my adult female crickets. Unfortunately for this shot, it was sitting pretty close to the younger ones so I had to point the camera to the far left. (Cricket is on the far right. Keeping a cricket cage is like keeping a farm, it's very hard to keep clean. I just gave them that egg crate a week or 2 ago!)




Now I have a few questions. What are you using for them to lay eggs in? How hot is your UVB lamp?