How often do you buy insects?

[Calift]

I think I'd like to get into leos, however I am a bit discouraged by the whole cricket/insect thing.

How often do you guys make trips to the petstore (or online ordering) to buy them?

If you breed your own, how often do they need to be replaced? What is a good colony size for a couple leos?

[jfreels]

I do have a colony of mealworms, but keep in mind, a colony can produce hundreds if not thousands of worms. My two leo's go through about 10 worms a day. My leftovers go to a friend with a turtle pond, another guy with a fish tank and a co-worker with a leo.

As far as crickets go, it's the same deal. It's not worth it for just a couple geckos to breed crickets. I buy 40 a week. If you're only feeding a couple leo's then it would take quite a long time to break even. I keep my crickets in a tub with bedding, egg crates, food dish and water crystals. I have seen very low mortality rates with my setup.

[dembonez]

my beardie devours silkworms so im at the petstore literally every other dayand paying 80 cents PER!!!!!!

its crazy i know but my parents dont want me breeding my own = / once i can convince them ill pick up a 150 egg dish online and then YAY!!

[NYDragon]

my beardie devours silkworms so im at the petstore literally every other dayand paying 80 cents PER!!!!!!

its crazy i know but my parents dont want me breeding my own = / once i can convince them ill pick up a 150 egg dish online and then YAY!!

Your petstore carries them?!? Your lucky! I either have to order them or get them at an expo.

From what I've heard, breeding crickets is a major pain. Its much easier just to buy them. You may want to try breeding dubias though. Much easier! But they can get a pretty big colony going after some time so if you only have one or two leos you might want to find someone to sell the excess too. Good luck!

[olstyn]

I just have the one leo at the moment (plus a crestie that gets crickets occasionally as treats). The leo eats 3-4 large crickets every 3 days (her appetite went down bigtime when she stopped growing), so I end up getting 3 dozen crickets every 2-3 weeks, depending on how many of them die off on me.

As far as what you can expect, well, different animals have different appetites - some adults are like mine and don't eat a ton, others chow down whatever you throw at them and want to eat daily. Juveniles are pretty much universally ravenous, however, so if you start with a baby, you will go through a lot of crickets at first. (5-6 appropriately sized crickets/day, maybe more, you do the math.)

[ctgecko]

some leo's are picky eaters too , so you would want to start a colony of feeders and some of geckos not want to eat them ! i have one that will only eat superworms and everyone else is on dubia roaches . roaches are super easy to breed and are probaly the best thing you could feed your gecko . i started with a couple hundred nymphs about 3 years ago , and my colony size is around 10 to 15 thousand.that number supports about 45 geckos with a lot to spare!!!

[bman123]

I only have 1 adult Leo and he doesn't eat much about 3 large crickets or 3 superworms every 3 days. I went last week and bought a dozen crickets, and 12 superworms. I had 9 superworms and 1 cricket left today.
I went today and got 12 large crickets, 100 mealworms and 18 waxworms. I still need to see what he prefers to eat so I am mixing up his diet.

It's super cheap tho even buying it from the pet store it's cheap. Large crickets are .8 cents a piece super worms are .13 cents a piece mealworms are $2.50 for 100 wax worms are $2.50 for 18 of them.
He's a bit thin and I'm trying to plump him up that's why I got the wax worms. I'm just gonna put 2 wax worms a week in his dish with the mealworms and see if he eats them. He was only fed mealworms by the breeder I got him from that's why I'm trying to mix up his food and plump him up a little.

[jfreels]

I'm such a hypocrite. This weekend I built a breeding tub for some crickets. That was brought on by my new beardie though. He eats about 15 a day right now.

[jbean7916]

I created a breeding tub for crix for my 2 MHD's. However, that didn't turn out so well. I had a hard time keeping the tub clean and free of any dead guys without losing bunches. So I'll use it as a home for my extras now.

My male MHD eats about 6 crix a day and my female maybe 2, she prefers night crawlers and other worms.

[cinderbird]

i breed my own dubia roaches for my 2 leos, and offer a few to my cresteds when i have them.

i give each of them 10-12 xsmall or small nymphs every other day or so. They grow and poop and a few normally run away for them to hunt later.

I LOVE my roaches. i cant stand crickets and mealworms smell.