How to Care for Crickets in the Florida Heat
Picking a staple feeder insect is one of the biggest choices you need to make after getting a reptile. You’re deciding what your pet’s main food source will be, ideally for its entire life. And if you don’t want to make a run to the pet store every week, you’re also picking an insect that you’ll share your house with. It’s kind of like getting a second pet that you need to raise and care for.
Crickets are one of the most popular feeder options for reptile pet owners. They’re easy to get, and fairly easy to breed. But if you live in Florida, you may run into some unexpected issues keeping them healthy and raising them. In this article, we’ll lay out all the special considerations you need to make when raising crickets in the Florida heat (and humidity).
Why Crickets?
There are two main species of crickets people use for feeder insects, the brown house cricket (Acheta domesticus) and the banded cricket (Gryllodes sigillatus). Both of these species are native to the hot, humid forests of Southeast Asia (which is an important detail for our purposes). Brown house crickets are the most common, and are easy to find at the pet store.
Both species are decent nutritionally, with the downside of having high fiber. This can be a red flag for reptiles that are prone to digestive problems like bearded dragons, which can become impacted if they eat too much chitin. For reference, these are the nutritional facts for a live brown house cricket:
Brown House Cricket Nutrition Facts
Protein: 21.4%
Fat: 6.9%
Moisture: 66.1%
Ash: 1.6%
Fiber: 3.9-7.5%
Calcium to phosphorus ratio: 1:10
Their low fat content makes them a “lean protein” food source. This is good to balance your pet’s diet if they need to lose weight, or if they need both a fatty and a lean protein. Because of their low calcium content, you’ll need to dust them with a calcium supplement.
Setting Up a Cricket Habitat
We have a full guide to raising crickets that will tell you everything you need to know about getting a colony going. These are just the basics.
For starters, you’re going to need a container to keep your crickets in. The size will depend on how many crickets are in your colony. A good starting size would be something in the neighborhood of 10 gallons. A plastic storage bin will work fine, but you will want to cut out the ceiling and glue in mesh to promote airflow.
The container needs a substrate to line the bottom, a food dish, a water dish, and a dish for egg laying. When your crickets lay eggs, you’ll take the egg dish out and move the eggs to a new container, where the babies will hatch. Small size deli cups work great for this kind of thing.
You also need a small thermometer and hygrometer to measure the temperature and humidity inside the habitat. This is crucial- especially if you live in Florida.
Conditions for Cricket Habitat
Luckily, crickets’ needs are closely aligned with the Florida climate. They like hot, relatively humid conditions. Ideally, you want 82-86° in the habitat and a humidity between 50 and 70%. Temperatures above 86 can cause them to stop reproducing, which is usually not a big deal if you can adjust the temperature.
But if the humidity goes too high, it can be catastrophic for your colony. Crickets are prone to a lot of diseases, many of which are caused by moisture in their environment.
A few of the more common issues you’ll see are viruses like iridovirus, densovirus, and cricket paralysis virus. All three are deadly and can be caused by high humidity.
With most cricket diseases, the simplest solution is to clean the habitat thoroughly. You may also need to switch to banded crickets, which are a little harder to find, but more resistant to viral diseases.
Nematodes can also be an issue with crickets. Nematodes are a parasite that get out of control in humid environments, so controlling internal humidity is crucial to keeping them away.
Adjusting for Florida’s Climate
In most of the US, the challenge is keeping your feeder insects warm and boosting the humidity. In Florida, you’ll have the opposite problem.
Passive Climate Control
Passive solutions are the most reliable for maintaining good conditions. If you can set up a stable environment, you (hopefully) won’t have to make many changes to it. Step one, get a thermometer and hygrometer to monitor the conditions.
Step two, make sure your crickets have a lot of airflow. A mesh lid for your cricket habitat is essential. Crickets are notorious for producing heat and humidity through their metabolism. You could also consider putting your crickets’ habitat in a styrofoam cooler so that the bottom layer stays cooler.
Picking substrate matters a lot too. Stay away from substrates like coco coir that contain a lot of moisture. Vermoulite is a good option that will keep the moisture down.
Your crickets’ water dish also radiates moisture, but there are other options to keep them hydrated that don’t. Consider an alternative like water crystals or moist cotton balls that won’t evaporate as much.
Cleaning
Crickets’ bodily waste can raise the humidity in their environment quickly. Be sure to clean the enclosure regularly. You might consider having two habitats set up, so that you can just rotate the crickets between them.
Active Climate Control
If the tweaks listed above aren’t working well enough, you might need to pull out the big guns. You could consider putting an oscillating fan near your crickets to keep air moving. Or, in extreme situations, you might need to add a dehumidifier to the corner of the house where you keep them.
This will be more effective the more you can separate them from the rest of your space- if you have the room, consider giving them their own closet so the dehumidifier can create a drier climate separate from the house.