Morning All

I feed my spiders roaches and crickets, just for a change of diet and a bit of rest for the colonies.
The quality of the crickets was very good in may area, with a tub lasting for weeks.
I would often buy extra tubs and move them over to a larger container as the crickets would survive and the smaller crickets would get bigger.

Over the last month or 2 the quality of crickets in my area have become shocking, a tub that is meant to have 45 crickets had only 13 to 30 crickets.
A bulk 5liter, use to have over 300 crickets then they dropped it to 150 and 160.
But when you count them there is only 90 to 100 crickets in those containers.

Some people complained about it. the cricket supplier seemed to try get he's act together.
I was at the pet shop on Thursday and the Lady said that they seem to have up the quality and the amount so I bought a tub of Extra large crickets, as you get 200 crickets inside.

When I got home on Thursday afternoon I feed my spiders.
Normally I can leave the remaining few crickets in the container for a whole week with food and water and no deaths.

This is the shocking state of the container on Saturday.
I normally let the females lay eggs for the pin heads, even the female die with in a couple of hours.
Absolutely gross :sick: :sick: and shocking.
What happens when people don't actually know what they are doing and don't keep their breeding stock clean.
The New owner of the crickets seems to have bitten off more than he can chew.

Gross. I don't use crickets anymore anyways, nematodes and all that

That is true, but the quality of the feeder is what counts. and that is what I look for.
I have not bought crickets in over month and a bit due to the poor condition of crickets, I proof all the crickets before I buy them, if I don't like how they look then I don't buy.
Also I'm friends with the lady at the shop so they also talk to me.
I'm in the process of looking for new supplier of crickets.

The original cricket supplier sold their company to cricket supplier X, and cricket supplier X stuff up along the way.
The original supplier of crickets, were healthy and looked after.

Might be worth it to try www.herpetology.co.za ?

Start your own colony of roaches I did and have never looked back.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I do have colonies of roaches, I have 7 species of roaches that I'm breeding with at the moment.
But if you don't do it properly you can deplete your breeding colony in no time.

I just feed crickets as another source of food and to give the roaches a chance to recover.
I still have to buy smaller crickets like pin heads for the slings.

The only colony of roaches I have an issue with is my forest roaches, but over the last couple of days I seem to have got huge amount of new nymphs hatching out.
So that is at least heading in the right direction.

@ F1refly, thanks.
I have emailed them early in the week.