Removing uneaten crickets...

[jfreels]

I hate removing the spare crickets that my lizards don't eat. Hate it so much that I will feed them just a few at a time to make sure they will all get eaten and I don't have to chase them around.

Well I finally found a decent solution. There has been an aquarium net sitting in my hallway for months that never made it over to my nieces house for her beta fish that my wife got her. The beta fish has since passed and the net has been collecting dust.

My first idea was to use it as a mealworm strainer....didn't work. Then, while chasing a medium cricket around the gecko tank I was frustrated. I don't just like squishing the one straggler I can't get out. So I grabbed the net. It worked great! It was just a small 3" net with a 10" handle. I'll have to try it with more crickets, but it seemed like the cricket didn't want to or couldn't jump on the net fabric.

[BOWSER11788]

if its lesss than 3 cix, and my beardies have un-eatan salad, i leave them in there, they eat saled, instead of beardie

[Foschi Exotic Serpents]

What kind of lizard is it? My beardie never leaves uneaten crickets no matter how many I put in there. I just keep a plastic critter keeper for my crickets. I buy the large jar of powdered cricket food and water bites. Both fortified with calcium and vitamins so I rarely ever dust the crickets. If there were any left over you could use the fish net idea but its not needed. If there is a couple pieces of greens left in the enclosure the crickets will nibble on this instead of your lizard. The crickets will eat anything actually. A small slice of potato will attract them and prevent nibbling on a lizard tail. Even a few pieces of dry lizard food. A potato chip ir a corn chip. Whatever you have in your pantry. Doesnt matter. If you are worried about your lizard getting nibbled on and dont want to fish out crickets just drop some morsel of food in there for them to nibble instead.

[jfreels]

Well the idea mainly came about from my viv with the two leo's. Sometimes one decides not to eat crickets, sometimes they both decide not to eat crickets. I can have anywhere between 1-12 crickets. If it's 1 or 2, I usually just leave them in there. But if I have more than that, I like to take them out. They still crap in the cage, die in the water and annoy the leos. I don't like to keep them in there. My beardie generally eats them all, but I won't leave any in there once I turn the lights out.

[Beardedragon]

YouTube - How to catch uneaten crickets from your bearded dragon

My only change is to remove the beardie from the tank, mine are just used to noise

[dsirkle]

In the past I have purchased 1000 crickets at a time on the internet and tried to keep them but they always started to stink terribly so I gave up on that. Now I buy them locally and toss in a carrot and there is no problem with leaving uneaten crickets in the enclosures.