What is your experance with Lee's Cricket Keeper & neeed advice on keeping the crickts alive

[kissfan4ever]

I got a frog in august. I use a small lee's cricket keeper to house the crickets. Makes it a lot easier to feed the frog. I have yet to figure out how to keep the crickets alive linger then a week. After re-reading one of my frog books I find crickets need more then cricket quencher (duh LOL) so I would slice a tomato but severale crickets got squashed by the slices. so now I dice the tomato and put a few chunks in a bottle cap and tap the bottle cap to a corner of the cricket keeper. I just started doing this. I bought 12 large crickets..or 11 now, one died on the way home. when I got home my dad informed me the cricket keeper is too small but I read back in September the small cricket keeper can hold 30 medium crickets so 12 large should be ok. So anyway, anyone else use lee's cricket keeper? what size keeper and crickets? how many crickets? and what do you use for food and drink? trying to figure out if I need to ditch the cricket keeper (I hope not, I have a hard time catching the crickets alive) need a bigger one or am just doing something wrong when feeding them. oh also how do you keep the crickets warm? I keep mine in the same room as my frog, in the basement so it's been cold. I am not sure if a heating pad will work or be too much.

[Ash]

To keep crickets more than a few days you need to feed them nutrition past a quenching gel which is mostly hydration. Feed them a variety of just about any fruit or veggie. They can also eat grains like oatmeal or other cereal grains. If you want your crickets to be the healthiest possible for your frogs then you will pay attention to feeding your crickets the healthiest possible diet which includes a variety of foods.

Depending where you buy your crickets from they can and often are malnourished, dehydrated and diseased and can drop like flies. We were buying hundreds of overpriced crickets a week and sometimes 40 or 50 would be dead the next day so we decided to breed our own Healthy All Natural Feeder Insects like crickets, springtails, isopods and Roaches turned it in to a business

I use both small and large cricket keepers to pull crickets out for the weeks feeding and the key is to buy from a good provider who feeds them an All Natural Diet and not just cheap lesser nutrition foods such as Potatoes or corn meal" feed them well and keep them hydrated.

[DigitalPunk]

Thats a lot of question I'll do my best with my limited knowledge.

1. I use a medium Rubbermaid container. I cut out the middle of the top and then duct taped screening over the hole (so the Crickets get good air circulation)

2. I buy my cricket food from Josh's Frogs - Largest online herps feeders and reptile supplies store

3. Don't use water. Crickets are suicidal little punks. I buy Cricket water gel from Josh's Frogs - Largest online herps feeders and reptile supplies store as well. The crickets can climb all over it and drink water but not get stuck or drown.

4. Use egg crates for them to hide in - I bought 10 of them from Josh's Frogs - Largest online herps feeders and reptile supplies store. Stack them on one side of the Rubbermaid bin in such a way it creates a little space between each one for crickets to hid in.

5. Keep the Crickets warm. They like it in the high 80s. Up into the low 90s and they could start breeding, but that is a whole other bag of worms


To get the crickets out to feed to frogs I use a glass/pyrex bowl. I pick up an egg crate and shake some into the bowl. Then dump out the extras until I have the proper amount for my frogs. easy peasy.

Dust the crickets with some Calcium with D3 and then randomly (I do it once a week but maybe 2 times a week is better) change from Calcium with DS to a multivitamin.

The Cricket food from Joshsfrogs will gut load the Crickets without killing them. This will make the crickets even more nutritious for your frogs. If you don't use Cricket food I have found baby carrots work great. Loaded with good vitamins for the frogs.

I use to use a small cricket keeper and it was just a pain in the butt to give the crickets water or food. The size of the rubbermaid container will largely depend on the number of crickets you want to have on hand. I bought 500 Crickets (I bought them smaller than I really wanted with the expectation that they will grow) so I needed a fairly large container.

Hope this all helps in some small way.

Paul

[flybyferns]

A little help for you from here on FF

http://www.frogforum.net/food-feeder...-crickets.html

http://www.frogforum.net/article-bac...e-cricket.html