Is this an okay substrate for toads???

[privet01]

Crickets and night-crawlers are very easy to raise on your own. The worms are probably easier to deal with if you live in an apartment. Crickets I recommend you have space for three to four Rubbermaid containers in a garage or out-building. Neither require much expense. Just plenty of vegetable and fruit scraps from the kitchen.

[Lindz]

Crickets scare me because I'm afraid they will get away and hide in the habitat, and then try to nibble on my toads. This might be a mostly unfounded fear, but I got it from years ago when I had two baby box turtles. I put crickets and meal worms along with fresh veggies in the habitat and assumed they would eat them. That was a mistake on my part, because two days later when I hadn't seen the turtles, I got concerned and tried to dig around for them. They were both dead and the meal worms and crickets had been eating them, there was a meal worm in one of their eye sockets. Messed me up from trying to keep pets for a while, I felt so bad and it was so gruesome. So now I shy away from foods that might try to nibble on my pets.

[privet01]

It's more likely that the turtles died for other reasons.

Crickets are omnivores and will eat anything so that includes dead animals. Although I don't worry about it, many posters have stated that they only leave crickets and other live food in the viv for an hour or so then remove what has not been eaten. Though I think that is mostly for preventing the viv habitat from having to deal the their feces and eventual death and decay of the crickets and such. Cricket feces does accumulate fast as crickets will eat their body weight daily. But I never see them bothering my two FBT's. and there are usually at least six crickets in the viv. But they have plenty plants to nibble on and a piece of a carrot. I've been told that the stuff in carrots and other similar colored veggies makes the FBT belly brighter red/orange. But as FBT's don't eat veggies, you have to get their food to eat it.