When you think of keeping crickets inside your house, to feed your reptile friends, you probably think it will be an easy task. However, crickets are fragile and their chances of survival between birth and adulthood, inside your home, are not so high. This is why we are going to give you a few tips on how to keep crickets alive.

How to Keep Crickets in Cage?

Of course, you cannot let the crickets roam free, so you’ll need to keep them in a box. However, you should know that the variation of temperature can harm them, even kill them. It is the same with the humidity level. Therefore, you will have to control both of these elements if you want your feeder crickets to survive.

But the most important element to consider in keeping crickets alive is the quantity of air that needs to flow through the box at all time. To provide it to them, you need to create holes around the box. They should be large enough so that there is really a flow of oxygen inside their cage, but not so much that the crickets are able to go through them.

What is their Natural Habitat Like?

In order to keep crickets alive, you need to know how they live in their natural habitat, so that you can reproduce something similar. The first thing you should understand is that crickets live in dark and dank places. Therefore, you need to make sure that the box is not transparent, so that the light cannot go through the material. You also have to make sure that the holes are not too numerous, which could cause an excess of light inside the box.

Crickets are usually found in tropical climates which explain that they enjoy humidity. It also means that they grow and thrive in high temperatures. You’ll need to keep them at a level that should remain between 25 to 27 degrees Celsius, at all time.

Crickets need space. You cannot cramp them in a small box and hope that they will survive. They need to be able to fly and move around. You’ll have to take that in consideration when you choose the box you will use for their cage.

Crickets Need a Clean Environment

Some people confuse the fact that these insects usually live in the wild, with the idea that you don’t need to take care of them. It is absolutely false. If you let the crickets inside their box without cleaning it, they will start to die. The first thing you need to do is remove the remaining food that the crickets have not eaten, from the box. If not, there is a great possibility that it will rapidly catch fungus, which they will end up ingesting, annihilating their chances of survival.

Cleaning the cages

Although crickets are found in the wild, keeping them in the house require proper hygiene and cleaning. They can stay alive for a long time if the cages are kept neat and clean, and you provide them with quality food. Also, do not let stale water inside their habitat too long; you need to change it regularly.

What do Crickets Eat?

Up to now, we have emphasized how difficult it is to keep crickets alive, but there is one good thing about them: their diet is quite varied, so you can feed them many different things. However, you should always make sure that it is dry food, since anything wet can be rapidly contaminated by bacteria, causing them to die. This dry food can take the form of oatmeal, cornflakes, and small vegetables in mini pieces.

Water is a source of life, and crickets need it to stay alive for two very different reasons. First, they need to replenish their bodies with it, like most living things. But the other reason, which calls for a much larger quantity, is the fact that they need an environment with a high level of humidity. Therefore, you may need to keep a few liters of water inside the box to create such a state.

To easily solve the feeding situation, you can actually get functional food from specialized stores which are also known as water bites. Thanks to a mixture of dry food and water, this type of nutrition provides the crickets all they need to survive.

Maintaining a Good Environment for the Feeder Crickets

Once you have applied all the previous measures indicated above, you now only have to monitor them and maintain their environment as clean as possible. The cleaning process of the box should never involve chemical products.

Check on them regularly to make sure they are healthy. If you notice a reduction in movement inside the box, maybe you should change it for a new one. Crickets are not dangerous and will not harm anyone inside the household, but as you can now tell, they can be quite difficult to maintain alive.