Crickets dying off fast: safe to feed?

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equinelove93

New member
Yesterday I bought about 40 crickets for my leos. I purchased them from a new pet store I haven't been too yet, it was an exotic pet specialty store. I normally buy from PetSmart.

I keep my crickets in 2 large cricket keepers (plain oats as substrate) with egg cartons, dish of cricket gel and a few pieces of flukers orange cubes. This method has worked for me and I would only lose maybe 2-3 crickets out of a batch.

The crickets I bought yesterday are dropping dead so fast that I cannot keep up with removing the dead. This morning I woke to find 21 dead crickets. They seem to fall onto their backs and thrash around for a bit before they die. My crickets have always been kept at room temperature and has never caused any issues. I just checked on my crickets again, and removed 8 more dead ones.

I'm a little worried about feeding the living crickets to my leos as I've never had an issue with crickets dying off this fast in the 6 years of keeping leos and crickets.

Could this be a disease or virus in the crickets? Can my leos get sick from these crickets (I haven't fed them these crickets yet) Also does anyone have any idea what could be causing this?

*Also the pet store owner talked to me and suggested I use potato instead of cricket gel when I bought the crickets, so I did have potato in the keepers for a day, but ended up taking that out and putting cricket gel instead when I noticed they were dying*
 
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acpart

Active member
I think cricket gel is the way to go also. Are they really large crickets? Any chance they are at the end of their lives anyway? I don't know of any diseases (except possibly pinworms and I'm not even sure of that) that the crickets could have and would affect the geckos. It's also possible that depending on where you live, if the crickets were shipped to the pet store they got cold and just weren't in good shape to begin with. You could find out how they get their crickets and where they come from.

Aliza
 
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equinelove93

New member
I thinking of contacting the shop owner. See if they were a new shipment. I asked for large crickets but the shop owner kinda just gave me an assortment. So there were really tiny pinhead crickets, small some.very large. Just a big mix of them. All of them are dying, including the very young/small crickets.
 
Elizabeth Freer

Elizabeth Freer

Active member
equinelove93 said:
I thinking of contacting the shop owner. See if they were a new shipment. I asked for large crickets but the shop owner kinda just gave me an assortment. So there were really tiny pinhead crickets, small some.very large. Just a big mix of them. All of them are dying, including the very young/small crickets.
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It's sad that they're all dying within a very short time. Please contact the shop owner. You asked for larges, not a mix. "Larges" could be at the end of their 9 week lives. The bigger the crickets the harder it is to keep them alive. Their die-off produces fumes that kills pinheads too.

I have my best luck with 1/2 growns and 1/3 growns. I grow them up to bigger sizes.

Feed crickets something like Professional Reptiles gutload food NOT plain oats or potatoes. You'll find the links right here. Plain oats contain excessive phosphorus. Phosphorus impairs the absorption of calcium.

Look for a cricket diet that contains 15-20% protein, 5% or less fat, and a little vitamin A acetate (retinol).

 
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