Instructions
Provide a hiding place. Crickets naturally like to hide in dark places so providing this within any cricket keeper is imperative to keeping the crickets alive. Most cricket keepers come with a dark-colored tube that runs into the side of the holding tank and then hangs outside of the tank. These tubes are capped off at the end to prevent the crickets from escaping. When you are ready to provide food for your pet, these tubes can be removed from the tank and the crickets can be shaken out of them and into the place where you keep your pet. This provides a simple way to move your pet's food from the holding tank to your pet's habitat. Be sure to remove only one of these pieces of tubing at a time to prevent your crickets from escaping. If you are making your own cricket keeper, you can use other types of materials for these hiding places. Some of the items you could consider using are empty toilet paper rolls or paper towel rolls, cardboard egg cartons, paper towels or PVC piping.
Avoid overcrowding. Most cricket keepers will house 150 medium sized crickets comfortably. If you are breeding or keeping smaller crickets you can fit more. However, crickets produce a large amount of waste so you should keep this in mind when determining how many crickets to store comfortably inside of your cricket keeper. Overcrowding the cricket keeper can result in some of your crickets dying.
Manage waste. Crickets can produce a great deal of waste and the more crickets that you keep in your cricket keeper, the more waste they will produce. In order to eliminate the odor of this waste, be sure to not cover the bottom of the cricket keeper with any sort of bedding.
Provide your crickets with food and water. Feeding the cricket its proper diet is extremely important not only to keeping the cricket alive, but also to keep your pet healthy, because whatever the crickets eat is passed on to your pet. Some of the items you might want to consider feeding your crickets are fruit scraps, powdered dog or cat food, vegetables, and other types of foods that are high in protein. You will also want to make sure that you have room for an adequate water supply in your cricket keeper. To provide your crickets with water, use a shallow dish and then put cotton balls into the dish to soak up the water. The crickets will remove the water from the cotton balls when they want a drink. This prevents your crickets from drowning in a basin of water.
How to Use a Cricket Keeper
If you own some sort of amphibian or lizard, you will probably need to feed it crickets. Crickets can be purchased in bulk from the local pet store when your pet needs to be fed, but keeping them yourself can save you tons of time and money. In order to do this you will need to purchase a cricket keeper and know how to use it properly in order to keep the crickets alive long enough for your pet to have its meals. Using a Cricket Keeper is fairly simple.