Ok so I need to figure this out....

WHY do they smell so bad and their cages get dirty oh so fast....

THis drives me mad. I clean out my 3 tubs today, and god they stunk. I know its cause the heat here went from cool to hot over night. So keeping htem out in the carage is out of the question now...If I go back to keeping htem inside. i want the smell kept down, i have the top of the tote all screen so theres plenty of air. just need a way to help keep the smell down. any tips?

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I kept crickets in a classroom that I student taught in for a class research thing, and had the same problem. I used a paper baking soda filter like the ones you can hang in your fridge to keep smell downand to keep foods from blending. They absorb most of the nasty smell.

The biggest problem with crickets and any insect is their straight gut there is very little time between ingestion and defecation. Defecation which emits small amounts of humidity and have an ammonia smell to them (hence "steaming pile of ****" crickets have the same thing, just really small piles), so even things as simple as odor eater shoe inserts (the sponge ones, not the rubber or gel ones) over vents would do some help. You can also provide a suspended substrate like cardboard egg cartons like is recommended for roaches which absorb some of the ammonia and make cleaning a little easier.

Really the harsh reality is that unfortunately **** stinks and crickets do a lot of it so there isn't a whole lot that can be done. If the cage (bucket/container/whatever you use) is inside, put it near an outlet with a glade plug-in fan thing or some other air freshner, so it doesn't spread, or use a better ventillated container so that there is more space for the ammonia to diffuse, granted the smell takes up a slightly bigger area, but it is much less pungant.

Best of luck! Let me know what you end up doing.

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“The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ (I found it!) but ‘That’s funny…'"
- Isaac Asimov



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You can increase the ventilation by putting screening on one side as well. For air to flow you need an in and an out. Much like opening a window on each side of a room it will flow much better.

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Mike
"Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time, and always start with the person nearest you." - Mother Teresa

Thats just one of the things that those of us who keep insect eaters have to deal with. Crickets in quantity just flat out stink.
About the only thing you can do is clean the tubs out more often.
A pain,... I know!

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Merlin,
What's Life Without A Little Magic!

Do you think that if you fed the crickets more vegetable matter rather than even amounts of vegetables and pieces of chicken/fish they would live longer?
I don't understand why the roaches' tubs don't smell half as bad as the crickets.The crickets poop is also more watery.I think I'll switch to roaches for good sometime in the near future.It really is annoying to clean cricket tubs every two days.

Aidan

I have tried using a box of Arm&Hammer baking soda. The ones you buy for your freezer or refridgerator. While it doesn't eliminate it totally, it has reduced the "rotten socks" odor.

Crickets by nature are much more inefficient in their digestion process, and tend to consume more liquid in their diet. This liquid carries with it an ammonia odor when it passes through the digestive system which makes it a much stronger odor. Same concept as cats spraying and dogs marking, the smell comes from the ammonia in the fluid. Roaches use more of the liquid effeciently within their body, and don't have as much in their excrement making them produce less of an odor. This also could come from the humidity, roaches live in a much dryer environment then crickets in nature, this is why they can reproduce so readily in homes, and live fairly happily.

You need to be careful with the baking soda boxes for your freezer, because they are sometimes open and easy for the insects to get into and eat the insides, I'm not sure this is bad for the crickets, but I can't see it being good for the reptiles that are going to eat them, if for no other reason then the possibility of them eating more baking soda then the gut loading supplement. That is why I recommended the paper baing soda filter, it can be hung out of reach for the crickets, and still be equally as effective.

__________________
“The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ (I found it!) but ‘That’s funny…'"
- Isaac Asimov



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