Keeping crickets alive+healthy for as long as you want!

I have had alot of problems with the whole newt feeding issue in the past, before I realized that the whole process can be much, much eaiser then I realize. I can keep as many crickets as a want alive, and packed full of vitamins for as long as I want. All it took was the right food supplement/vitimin packer. Go to a petstore and ask for FLUCKES ORANGE CUBES COMPLETE CRICKET DIET. Full of important vitamins that all end up in your newts system.
They are the only thing i know of that can keep those crickets alive and thriving for weeks.
Just do these simple things and you wont have to sit in traffic to go to the petstore every few days.

1. Buy small crickets, they are cheaper and actually much more likely to be eaten. If they are too big, they will just die of starvation in the newt tank.

2. Buy 15-20 for 3-5 few newts, and make sure you have a big enough plastic tarrium, a 5 dollar mouse carrier or anything that can hold a gallon is ideal.

3. Tweezer feed you newts if you can, be patient, and don't make sudden movements. move the prey slowly towords the newt, don't ever hit them with it, and just let the cricket move on its own.

4.Hold it by the hind leg, as they can loose this and still live. If the newt doesn't got for it, try again later, but don't stress it, it may take some time to be comfortable.

5. One final thing that can be a really good precaution if you have a timid newt, one of mine just stays in his little house all day, and won't tweezer feed. I have to let a few crickets "free range" but not very many, beacuse you need...

6. Lots and lots of floaty stuff/aquatic grass for the crickets to climb on, if they fall in open water on their backs they just die. They are dumb. Plastic lillypads that are linked up work really well.

7. If a cricket dies, and you know it was really recent or you saw it drown, go ahaed and try to tweezer feed it, if no one wants it tosss it, but many of my newts don't care it it just died, they never eat anything thats rotton.

8. Make sure you tweezer feed frozen bloodworms too, some newts don't even attack crickets unless they are really, really close. Bloodworms can be cut up with a hot knife and tweezwer fed. My Taricha would litrally rip them apart like a great white shark. I feed all my guys both, and I have a tiny guppy that cleans out the small pieces, but I never feed them fish, the fish are so dirty that almost killed my filter.

Hope this helps! anyone that knows how to successfully breed crickets let me know, I can't seem to do it!


this wild collected and released cricket from central Washington(western state)and is over 5 inches long(as big as a chicken egg)!

(Message edited by newtsrfun on January 04, 2005)

(Message edited by newtsrfun on January 04, 2005)

that cricket is a female shieldback cricket. very common in washington. when i lived there, i fould lots of them. the males make an incredibly loud shrill call.