Cricket Care Guide

Cricket Care Guide

Proper care helps your live crickets stay active, healthy, and ready to feed. Use this guide to help your feeder crickets last longer after arrival and provide better nutrition for your reptiles, amphibians, birds, and exotic pets.

1. Open Your Shipment Promptly

Bring your crickets indoors as soon as they are delivered. Live insects should not sit outside in direct sun, freezing temperatures, or extreme heat. Open the package carefully and move the crickets into a ventilated keeper or storage container.

2. Use a Ventilated Container

Crickets need airflow. A cricket keeper, ventilated plastic bin, or escape-resistant container with proper ventilation works best. Avoid airtight containers, excess moisture, and overcrowding.

3. Add Egg Crate or Climbing Material

Place egg crate, cardboard tubes, or similar climbing material inside the container. This gives crickets more surface area, helps reduce crowding, and makes them easier to collect at feeding time.

4. Keep Crickets at a Stable Temperature

Crickets do best in a warm, stable environment. Keep them at room temperature and away from direct sunlight, cold drafts, heaters, garages, or windows. Extreme temperature swings can reduce activity and survival.

5. Provide Food

Feed your crickets a dry cricket food, gut-load feed, or high-quality grain-based food source. Gut-loading helps improve the nutritional value of the crickets before they are fed to your pet.

6. Provide Moisture Safely

Crickets need moisture, but standing water can cause drowning and excess humidity. Use cricket water crystals, hydration gel, or small pieces of fresh produce such as carrot, potato, apple, or leafy greens. Remove old produce before it molds.

7. Keep the Container Dry and Clean

Too much moisture can cause odor, mold, and poor cricket health. Remove dead crickets, old food, and spoiled produce regularly. Keep the container dry, ventilated, and clean.

8. Feed the Right Size Cricket

Choose a cricket size that matches your pet. As a general rule, feeder insects should be no larger than the space between your pet’s eyes. When in doubt, choose a smaller size.

Cricket Size Guide

  • Pinhead Crickets: Best for hatchlings, dart frogs, tiny geckos, and very small pets.
  • 1/8 Inch Crickets: Good for baby reptiles, small amphibians, and pets transitioning from pinheads.
  • 1/4 Inch Crickets: Great for juvenile reptiles, young geckos, and small chameleons.
  • 1/2 Inch Crickets: Best for growing reptiles, larger geckos, young bearded dragons, and medium feeders.
  • 3/4 Inch Crickets: A strong option for sub-adult reptiles, adult geckos, chameleons, and larger amphibians.
  • 7/8 Inch Crickets: Best for adult reptiles, bearded dragons, larger geckos, birds, and pets ready for full-size feeders.

Feeding Tips

  • Only feed an amount your pet can eat in a reasonable time.
  • Do not leave loose crickets in your pet’s enclosure for extended periods.
  • Remove uneaten crickets when possible.
  • Dust crickets with calcium or vitamins if recommended for your animal.
  • Gut-load crickets before feeding for better nutritional value.

Common Cricket Care Mistakes

  • Leaving crickets in the shipping box too long.
  • Keeping crickets in an airtight container.
  • Using standing water instead of a safe moisture source.
  • Allowing the container to become too humid.
  • Leaving spoiled produce or dead crickets in the container.
  • Storing crickets somewhere too hot, too cold, or too damp.

Need Help Choosing a Size?

If you are unsure which cricket size is best for your animal, start smaller and size up as your pet grows. You can also contact Wasatch Feeder Insects for help choosing the right feeder size.