Feeding live insects

I don't use crickets for anything.....they're too messy, too noisy and too hard to keep alive. I order my mealworms and waxworms online and keep em in the fridge. I used to breed Lobster Roaches as well.

[The_Godfather]

I buy them from the pet shop and immediately feed em to the pets. The toads can take 20 in between them if they wanted. They are crazy eaters.

[JLC]

So John...how often do you have to go to the petstore to feed your toads?

[Pirranha]

i buy crickets in 500 or 1000 lot boxes and keep em in a rubbermaid with some carrot or potato(e)
i used to breed em but there were mites in there that went crazy so i quit that real fast-i think my male emp. scorpion drown himself cause of them-i found him in his waterdish.Looked like he tried to dunk himself but couldnt quite do it and just stayed there too long.

[JLC]

Huh....I never thought of mites plaguing insects and aracnids, too. I guess you can't exactly wipe down your scorpion with the same mite treatment you would use on your snake!

[The_Godfather]

those mites were probably baby crickets.... They look like them, real small.


I buy em every 3 days or so.

[JLC]

I've got crickets living in my basement (the ugliest crickets I've ever seen...don't look like the normal brown ones in the petstore, nor the big black ones I'm used to from Texas). Would it be OK to toss those into a lizard cage as I find them? I'd love to have a cricket terminator down there! LOL

[invadertoast]

LOL....just what we all want in life....Free Mealworms!!

What critters do you have that you feed 'em to?

I feed 'em to leos

[Marla]

I've got crickets living in my basement (the ugliest crickets I've ever seen...don't look like the normal brown ones in the petstore, nor the big black ones I'm used to from Texas). Would it be OK to toss those into a lizard cage as I find them? I'd love to have a cricket terminator down there! LOL

Maybe what you have are what we call "camel crickets" or "cave crickets" around here. They are ugly as homemade sin and have rounder bodies than your typical black or brown cricket, tend to be found in basements, crawl spaces, and caves (prefer dark, cool & humid), and always look hungry. When I lived in a basement I woke up to find them in my bathroom every morning. Yuck!

[Smynx]

Judy, I'm very wary of feeding anything wild-caught to our pets, but given the state of some of the pet store inventory we've heard about on here, wild-caught might be preferable.

We get our crickets from the pet store once a week. I think we've been getting about 20 of them at a time. We coat them with a calcium/vitamin d dust and throw them in the tank with the lizard. He usually eats all of them at once (which is quite a show), then he's good for the week. During the week we offer fruits and veggies. Occasionally we give him a pinkie too.