housing 5000 crickets

[peppered...leopard]

My leos have been thriving on mealies, dubias, and goliath worms. I've been thinking about buying crickets in bulk, but what size/type setup is most sanitary for 5000 crickets???

 

[jakemyster44]

I have heard of people using plastic storage bins (similar to what alot of us use for dubias) and also plastic garbage cans. I think as long as you have plenty of egg crates, to maximise surface area you will be fine.

 

[venomcd]

A jumbo sterilte tote works great. Like Jake said lots of suface area, egg crates, paper towel rolls, and cardboard cell partitions work great. Then food and water crystals and your good to go.

 

[eric]

Patrick please be aware that housing 5000 crickets together are going to generate a lot of heat. Which will ultimately lead to die offs in mass quantities. I house no more than 1000 crickets in a 18GAL.Rubbermaid tub. I highly recommend 5 18GAL. storage tubs w/ventilation or two trash cans w/ventilation for housing 5000+ crickets. This is JMO!

 

[ZooKeeperKarin]

How many reptiles are you feeding? I have 3 geckos and I bought 500 1/2 inch crickets a few weeks ago.
I've since decided to breed the crickets, but 500 was still a huge amount. I couldn't imagine 5000.
Several large Rubbermaid tubs should be fine with plenty of egg crate space (you don't want the crickets to have to stand on each other).
Just be aware that they may die off before you get a chance to feed them to your reptiles. I can't remember what the life expectancy was, but it's not real long.
With that many crickets you will be cleaning often!

 

[ZooKeeperKarin]

Duh... I didn't bother to see you're a breeder!

I'm going to start breeding crickets and maybe this is an idea you can use...

I thought if I have a large Rubbermaid tote, why couldn't I cut out the entire bottom and replace it with metal screen? Obviously secure it real well with hot glue and probably mailing tape. I'm figuring the cricket poop would fall through the screen and I'd just have to clean the newspaper or a tray underneath. The tote would have to be a couple inches off the floor. That would drastically cut down on the cleaning of the inside of the enclosure.

I use a 10 gal aquarium for 500 crickets (recommended by Fluker's, but it seemed a bit cramped to me). I would think 3 or 4 large Rubbermaid totes should be sufficient for 5000.

 

[Retribution Reptiles]

i have 2 90 quart sterelite tubs that i can easily fit 3-4k crickets in each. i have no issues with mass deaths as long as there is plenty of ventalation, food, and water. if you would like i could take pictures and e-mail them to you.

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=10401040

that's the tubs i use

thanks,

Ryan

 

[ajveachster]

This is what Ryan and I have for insect setups. We have 2 of the big white containers for crickets. We house about 2000 in each, but I'm sure we could house more. That is just all we need of the different sizes for now.
http://www.geckoforums.net/showthread.php?t=42350