INSIGHTS
Some of my thoughts and reasons for trying something while this project was evolving over the years.
Crickets, so I have heard, need a high protein diet or else they become even more cannibalistic than they already are. Missing back leg(s) are commonly observed. More so if not given enough food. Crickets will also eat their discarded skins, sometimes. Even with ample food present, some are attacked while molting.
I am not sure of exact dietary requirements, but a complete food should be a good start. I believe the crickets will crave what they need, so they are offered a variety of foods. Fish food was the first thing that came to mind and because I have tropical fish, I had the food on-hand before we were thinking of raising crickets. I have been feeding my tropical fish (TetraFin) flakes and it was a big hit when I brought the first batch of crickets home from the pet store. Fish food is a little pricey, so I added instant oatmeal, also a hit with the midsize and larger crickets. To cut the cost even further, I added a high protein dry cat food, reduced to medium ground coffee size. Kitten food is a complete diet for kittens so this made sense. Kitten food is higher in fat and protein than adult cat food.
Darwinism
The more I observe the crickets the more I see the theories of Charles Darwin. Survival of the fittest. Fittest can be looked at as those that ‘can’ survive and reproduce. Those that 'cannot' are eaten. If a cricket jumped straight up into the air it would be eaten by the predator when it came back down to the ground. Those that jumped away got away and reproduced. So the ones that jumped the furthest away bred and that is what we have today.
I have never seen one of my crickets fly. These seem to have lost their ability to use their wings. One pair of wings falls off a few days after getting them. Possibly they are a liability and the ones that shed them survived because they were better jumpers.
Their affinity to water baffles me. If a cricket encounters a puddle, it will try to go swimming. They have absolutely no fear of water. One of my water devices has a trough on each side with a channel that connects them to a small reservoir under the water supply. If I cut the channel too narrow the water will not flow (meniscus properties). If I cut the channel wide enough to overcome this, a cricket you would think is too big will squeeze thru the channel of water and enter the water bottle and eventually drown. What is the fascination with the channel of water? Darwin award.
Another evolution item I see is mostly luck. Not all crickets do the same thing at the same time.
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Hatching does not happen all at once but is spread out over several weeks. I often wondered if there is communication between eggs. Crickets seem to do mass hatchings as well as spread out hatching.
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When transferring the crickets between cages, some “run for the hills” as soon as the box is tipped on its side. Others saunter and just fall over the edge, yet others choose to hide in the frass and have to be removed by hand. They will run back into the frass if chased out. Evolutionary wise, possibly the ones that moved quickly drew away the predators from the remaining ones. Maybe the ones that remained (often missing legs or had other deformities) became sacrifices so the healthier ones escaped.
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Even as pinheads they act differently. If dumped as a mass into the center of a cage, some reach the sides of the cage in a few seconds while others remain motionless. Eventually, they move.
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Not all of the crickets hatching in a 3 day period grow at the same rate. For the most part, they always have food and water so nutrition should not play a part unless it is the food they eat. Some go for the fish flakes, others go for the oatmeal. Many carry their food away from the pile, sometimes into their hiding areas where others wait to steal their food. Some stay at the pile to eat.
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Some will mature (get wings) in 4 weeks while most need 5 weeks and a few others take weeks longer, some are runts, all from the same batch of pinheads. I see some evolutionary advantage to this. Maybe the environment was not good for breeding at first and the ones that matured later were at their peak when conditions were right.
Statistical Probabilities.
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The Crickets are a living culture and therefore will show signs of what can happen in a large enough population. There are a certain amount that will have deformities. Some are bolder than others. Some more aggressive. Some smaller. Some just die for whatever reason. This is true in most groups, including humans.
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Of the 3000 that hatch only about 1500 will reach maturity. I will see a few carcasses strewn about the frass (they will eat their cast-off exoskeletons given time) but do not see enough bodies to account for the numbers that do not mature. They are not escaping and all I can assume is cannibalism. They are very vulnerable when molting, which happens several times in their lives (6 times?). If there is an aggressive neighbor, there may be only one remaining. Maybe they are the ones that mature faster?
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Some are missing the tarsus, some are missing the tibia, some an entire leg is gone, and some both back legs are missing. Some even have lost 4 of the 6 legs. The back legs go first. I doubt it if is gambling debts, I suspect aggressive neighbors again as a leg is high in protein and easy picking during molting.
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Sometimes they perish while molting. This is a very strenuous time for them and if something goes awry during the process the cricket dies.
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Molting deformities - Sometimes the wings are deformed. Bad luck for males. Usually, in a batch of crickets, there will be a couple in the next to last instar where the “hips are displaced”. The rear legs are out to their sides and worthless. Sometimes I will see pieces of exoskeleton stuck and the leg is elongated. When you look at all the cell generation that happens at a molt there is no surprise there are incidences. Most molt correctly.
I wonder how the number of deformities compares to other populations? This is an entire field of science, I am sure.
More about Heat. This cannot be stressed enough if trying to maximize production.
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In the summer, when the ambient temperature is in the mid to upper 70's (in my basement), the time to reach maturity is a full week less than in the winter when the temperature is closer to 67°
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In the summer, ELB’s are typically done producing 25 days after the eggs are initially started being laid. If left in the breeding cage past 10 days, pinheads start emerging. When transferred to the hatching cage the hatching slows significantly for a few days and then pickups greatly. The difference is the heat under the ELB. While in the breeding cage the heater is directly under the ELB (located under the tank). More heat is transferred to the ELB than to anywhere else. The crickets seem to like this but still congregate in the egg carton set against the ELB for easier access to the ELB. The temperature of the bottom of the ELB, with the thermometer inserted thru the medium, is almost 100° F and drops down to 85ׄ° F at the upper surface. This could be why both sexes will dig into the medium, they are looking for heat. (Laying a piece of 1/8" hardware cloth directly on the substrate prevents their digging and does not interfere with egg laying.)
In the hatching cage, the heat is dispersed across the bottom so there is more surface area to lose heat. Setting inverted plastic mushroom containers slow the heat loss and give them a place to hide. The bottom of the ELB ideally should be in the low 80’s. In the summertime while the ambient temp is closer to 77° F the ELB are finished after 25 days. In the winter the ambient temp is 67° F. The ELBs were taking up to 40 days to complete hatching. One correction made was the aquarium heater was only 25 watts and was not keeping the base warm enough for the hatching to complete in 25 days. Going to a 50-watt heat resolved the problem. One effect of insufficient heat I noticed was the amount of water lost in the ELB over the past 3 days. Typically about 50 grams of water is lost. This is now my clue that something is not what it should be.
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Too Much Heat?
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Yes, it is possible to have too much heat on the base. A heater malfunctioned and the water reached 118° f. Many of the pinheads perished, but not all. I hoped they would have gotten on top of the egg cartons but I can only assume their ability to reason is not there. Why some survived is probably more Darwinism, survival of the fittest.
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