Calling All Cricket Feeders...

A

anne-marie

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I just bought some medium size crickets for the axies today. How do people go about feeding them? What do you need to keep the crickets alive? Any other cricket related info would be appreciated too! Any ideas?
 
Nope, why not just give them worms there easier to keep and they are better for the axies and more commonly found
 
I think the idea is that variety is the spice of life. I was wondering the same thing, Anne-Marie lol. Maybe kill the cricket first? Stick it on a kebab stick.... or just hold it with umm.. the word escapes me... large tweezers... tongs..
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How do you feed worms?
 
Anne, you need a source of moisture (try a cotton-ball soaked in water), some food (veggies, fruits, dry dog food. I usually coat whatever they eat in a high-quality cricket dust. There are commercial 'cricket bites' too, but they're expensive.), and an escape-proof house. They can chew through cardboard in a matter of minutes.

I take the cricket and hold it in front of their face with tweezers. Once they realize food is at the surface, I just let the crickets swim around and get picked off, like Jaws.

Crickets make a good treat, but I wouldn't use them as a staple. With aquatic animals, you can't dust them or anything, so their nutritional value is lower than what it would be if it were dusted.

(Message edited by Joan on June 29, 2005)
 
Well I always use my hands when feeding my axies but tweezers would work just don’t push so hard that you cut the worm in halve.
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At college when they feed crickets to the axies, they always cut the back legs off. i think it is to stop them scratching their throat.
 
On the topic of keeping them alive, they need it to be warm. Packs I buy usually die off in about a week. Although you may have better luck in perth.
I usually hand feed my axies anyway, so i find if I can get the crickets two back legs in between my fingers and lower it towards the axies, they usually grab them.
I recently found out crickets will also "skate" across the surface of the water, so during a salt bath I popped a couple in the container. Watching the axies stalk the crickets from underneath is quite amusing. Although if you put them in your tank you may have to lure the axies closer to the surface.
 
Make sure that the container you are putting the crickets in is well ventilated. Otherwise, the air will become very humid, and the crickets will literally drown from all the moisture in the air.
 
I usually buy just a dozen (or half a dozen, if the shop will let you), and feed them all at once. Since I have 3 axolotls (and other sals that enjoy an occasional cricket), this was never a problem. But buying only a few means you don't have to worry about keeping them alive.
 
Thanks for the input. In Perth, we can only buy them in tubs of 50 - 75 depending on size. I'm just testing them out at this stage and fed a few yesterday - I can't believe they actually ate 'em! I didn't cut off the back legs and it did look like it probably scratches. I'm a bit squeamish when it comes to animal or invertebrate mutilation but I guess I'll try. How on earth do you hold them to cut their legs off?
 
I don't cut their legs off because medium crickets aren't very big. If I was using larger ones I probably would. I feed my axies a dozen crickets a month as a treat. I feed them through out one week. If you want to feed crickets as a staple you would need to get some high quality cricket food and gut load them to make them more nutritional. They don't hold that much nutritional value because their exoskeleton can't be digested.
 
And crickets will make their normally dark brown poo (depending on what you feed) very light (the exoskeletons). It startled me at first! But then I realized what was going on.
 
Hi Anne-Marie,

As you know I feed crickets as a staple so I go through a lot of them. I buy a tub of about 50 medium ones every two-three weeks at the moment.

They came in a chinese take away container with air holes punched in the top and a egg carton inside with some stuff on the bottom kind of looks like what you would line a mouse home with.

I feed them bits of carrot every four days, I take the old stuff out and put fresh in. Just the scraps from cooking dinner. Apparently they get moisture from the carrots (so I am told by the pet store hmm....).

All I do when feeding is take the lid off my tank and set it aside, take the lid off the container and hold the container over the top of my tank fairly close to the water surface, then I tilt the container on its side and shake it until some crickets are crawling up the side wall that is sloping toward the water, then I just grab some tweezers and flick them into the water. Sometimes they jump in themselves.

I then grab them by one of their big back legs with the tweezers and drag them down through the water and hold them above her, it's great because they kick she loves it. Sometimes she will come up and eat them swimming at the surface.

I feed her about five every two nights, she has put on so much weight since feeding her crickets, she looks much better.

Oh, I don't remove any legs, sometimes they come off in the tweezers though, then I go for the other leg.

Some usually die in the container I pick them out and throw them out.

Don't worry too much about them escaping they seem to be more scared of us!!

That was a long winded explanation!!
 
Anne-Marie - we hold the crickets using tweezers or our hands if the person is not squeemish and jus cut them off.lol. its fun when you drop a cricket in the exotic animal room at college! chasing them is fun! and people trying to run away from them is fun. haha!
 
No worries, how are they going with them? you have quite a lot of axies!! you will go through them quick. Shortie is currently looking at me waving her front legs around, she just had five of them and wants more. This lot I got are not as good as the last they seem to be dying off inside the container very annoying.
 
They love em!! Even my old fuddy-duddy original pair have made the switch really well. I have found that it is easier just to shake some from the container into the water, then just pick them out using my hand and feed directly to the axies.

The only thing I am concerned about is the nutritional value, but otherwise its a great treat for them.

Whats the grainy stuff that they come packed in, Natasha? Is it food or just some kind of substrate?
 
I think it is just some kind of substrate. It looks like fine wood chipping combined with cat litter or something in mine.

I am thinking of going down to that place you mentioned this weekend, got the weekend off no uni assignments due and I don't work weekends. Was it in O'Connor did you say? and what was the name again? the place with the variety of foods and fish etc. I should look it up but I can't remember which thread it's under.
 
It's a really stupid name and I don't why it's called this but it's called Vebas in Zeta Crescent, O'Connor. Its' in the White Pages i think.
 
Excellent, thanks for that. I have only got four crickets left, time to go and buy more food.
 
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