How Much Water Do Crickets Consume?
Someone asked me this question and I really had not given it much thought. Water is very inexpensive in Ohio, something I had not thought about in other parts of the world. So I kept track of the water usage where I could.
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The cricket eggs are laid in what I call an ELB, and there are between 3 to 5 ELBs in the hatching box at any given time. 4 is the norm. Each box must be kept damp, so I top off the boxes (250g total wt) with water every 3 days when I restart the hatching box and move all that have left the ELBs into a rearing box. I kept track of the water needed to top off the ELBs over a 6 day period and then divide that by 2 to arrive at an average needed per rearing box.
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For the actual raising, a 500 ml bottle of water was use used only by that cage and was the only source of water. When that amount was exhausted it was filled with 500 ml again. When that was exhausted, since it was near the end of the cycle, 250 ml was placed directly into their water bottle. When the batch was harvested, the difference was documented.
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The crickets were approximately 28 days old when the test ended and many were in their last, pre imago, stage. No adults formed and some were well behind the majority. This is the best stage to harvest them, I believe.
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Amount used by the hatching box over a 3 day period- 448 ml
Amount consumed by the growing crickets- 1092 ml
Total obvious water needs- 1550 ml
Weight of crickets at end of test- 573 grams.
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This is interesting. There are approximately 3 crickets per gram at this instar. Looking at the water figures, this translates to just under 1 gram of water per cricket harvested. Many crickets die off during development of the batch.
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The test was done in August 2018. The ambient temperature was between 72 and 80 (Hatching room was warmer). The humidity was around 40-45 %.
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My system uses a way to deliver water to them without the use of gels or any other carrier. The water might be called "open" as it forms a shallow puddle the crickets drink from.
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HIgher ambient temperature requires more water for the ELBs, but they hatch at a faster rate, cutting off about a week of hatching time. In winter the ambient temp is much less and there could be 5 ELBs in the hatching box as the hatch rate is slowed. There seems to be an increase in water needed to top off the ELB when there is an increase in hatching.
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Water use that was not documented:
Water used by the adults laying the eggs.
Water used to clean the equipment
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Questions unanswered- This test was done in August where the average time to maturing is under 31 days. In the winter months, the time to maturity is closer to 5 weeks. Is there a difference in water needed? I suspect the ELB will require more as much of the water is driven off by the heat beneath. I think.
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No additional vegetables were given to this batch. If they were give squash or apples, what would the effect be on the water demands.
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