As we all know, raising reptiles can definitely be a laborious task. With the housing constraints, lighting and temperatures, skin care, and feeding owning a reptile of any sort is not your typical everyday routine like raising a cat or dog. Any one who has ever had the pleasure of actually raising a reptile will know just how tedious the feeding can be. Many times the snake or lizard will require you to feed them crickets. This is not a horrible thing; it can however be a pain when it comes time to getting more food for your reptile.
While many pet stores now carry a large stock of crickets for the reptile owners out there, carting them back and forth can be a chore in itself. For this reason, many people have decided that they are going to raise or keep the crickets at home for themselves and save all of the travel fuss when it comes to food for their pet. What many people fail to realize however, is that there is no easy way to raise, keep, and control a large cricket population in your home without a sensible plan ahead of time.
Should you elect to keep crickets in your home for purpose of food for your pet frog for example, it would be best to place the crickets in at least a 10-gallon aquarium. This will easily be big enough to house many crickets at one time. Should you have a large assortment of reptiles as pets, it may not be a bad idea to double the size of the tank to accommodate more crickets as a food source. So in terms of space a 10-20 gallon aquarium will easily suffice as a home for the crickets. Once you have the tank, you will want to find a lid that allows the passage of air. Without a passage, the crickets will be of no use to you because they will be dead. Nine times out of ten, a reptile will pass on a dead cricket apposed to a live one. For this reason, you will want to ensure that the tank has breath-ability. One of the best measures for this would be a screen, such as a window screen stretched over a frame, this will allow the air to get in and keep the crickets in their place and not running rampant all over your home.
You will need to place some egg crate into the tank for the crickets to walk on, otherwise they will all be walking on each other and there will be many crushed crickets in your tank. This is not healthy for your stock, and eventually you will have to go in and remove the dead crickets. Depending on how many pet frogs you have, or their size can pretty much dictate how many crickets you will need to keep in the feeder tank. Ideally you will want to order more than you will actually use, as many of them will most likely die in the transition and new environment. It is far cheaper to order the crickets online and have them shipped to you in a box, than it is to go out to the pet store and purchase them. Some places online however, have policies as to how many you must purchase at one time. For example you may be faced with a company online that requires you to order a minimum of 500 cricket lots, there may be another place that asks that you order 2,000 at a time. Doing your homework in this area will save you a lot of time and money.
You will want to feed the crickets in your tank as well, as if you do not they will only die on you and become useless. The best way to feed them is to place a small shallow dish with anything from fish flacks to cereal crumbs from the bottom of a box. Make sure that you do not feed them crumbs from a sugary cereal such as fruit loops as this will only make them die, if they do not die for what ever reason they will only make your frog or other reptile ill. Place an orange wedge in there for a source of water, not a dish of water or they will surely drown. This is what is known as gut loading, the healthier you treat your crickets the healthier your frog or other reptile will be in the end.
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