House crickets are reminiscent of grasshoppers. They make chirping noises that create a special atmosphere on mild summer nights. Their songs are less romantic as soon as they appear in the apartment. If they find optimal living conditions and spread, only combat will help.

House crickets are bred as food for reptiles

Table of Contents

Show all
  1. the essentials in brief
  2. Characteristics
  3. Buy
  4. Breeding Guide
  5. home remedies
  6. Fight chemically
  7. way of life
  8. Natural habitat
  9. frequently asked Questions

    10. the essentials in brief

    • Crickets belong to the cricket family and are mainly found near people
    • When buying, you should pay attention to good quality: fit, strong animals and no carcasses in the packaging
    • House crickets should be fed a mix of dry food such as oatmeal or rodent pellets and fresh food such as fruit and vegetables
    • Crickets can be controlled with sticky traps, white water, or pepper and vinegar barriers

    What are house crickets?

    Behind the house cricket is an insect from the cricket family. Their Latin name Acheta domesticus suggests behavior and way of life. Acheta is translated singer, while the suffix domesticus refers to the common occurrence in domestic environments. Therefore crickets are sometimes referred to as house crickets.

    In terraristics, the insects serve as food for reptiles. House crickets are between 16 and 20 millimeters long. Unlike green locusts, their bodies are straw-yellow in color. The head and pronotum are patterned dark brown to black.

    Buy in specialist shops or online

    You can buy crickets directly in numerous pet stores such as Fressnapf. If you decide to buy from a pet store, there are a few things to keep in mind. Not only the price plays a role, but also the living conditions of the animals, which are often inadequate. Amazon also offers the insects at a reasonable price, although ordering online has more disadvantages than advantages. If in doubt, decide to buy from other cricket breeders in your area.

    Questions about the purchase consideration:

    • Do house crickets look fit and alive?
    • Is the manufacturer indicated on the package?
    • Do the insects live permanently in the box?
    • Are there dead animals in the container?

    tips

    When shipping, make sure that the delivery time is as short as possible. Even a day or two of lack of food causes stress, causes cannibalism and has a negative effect on the vitality of the insects.

    Instructions for growing yourself

    Breeding and keeping the insects is comparatively easy, since house crickets need enough food and warm temperatures. These conditions can easily be created in a grow tank. Crickets you have bred yourself can later be fed as live food or dried. They save the insects from the stress of lack of food, which often occurs when transporting them home from the dealer. Pay attention to species-appropriate conditions to ensure optimal living conditions for the house crickets.

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    materials and breeding

    Use a container with a size of 50 x 30 x 30 centimeters. There is room for around 1,000 larvae or 500 adult house crickets. Both containers made of plastic and a closable terrarium are suitable. To ensure sufficient oxygen supply, you should cover the opening with fly screens. Cover the floor with sand or wood shavings.

    To lay eggs you need a tea strainer, which you fill with substrate. Coconut fibers are suitable for this. Females can use their egg-laying apparatus to pierce the fine mesh in the substrate in order to lay their eggs there. At the same time, the eggs are protected in the tea strainer and cannot be eaten.

    Additional rearing containers are necessary so that the larvae can develop undisturbed. After a few days, the tea strainer is taken out of the terrarium so that you can place the substrate with the eggs in a breeding container. This is filled with about one centimeter of sand. Egg cartons or crumpled up newspaper provide hiding places. In the absence of such retreats, the larvae themselves reduce their population through cannibalism.

    tips

    If you want to remove the adult house crickets from the breeding container, you should go outside. Depending on the temperature, the insects have different levels of agility and can quickly escape into the apartment.

    Feed

    Crickets like variety

    House crickets should always be fed with variety. They need a mix of dry and fresh food to give them all the nutrients they need. Bought house crickets are often exhausted because they are fed inferior food. You should therefore provide your house crickets with high-energy food shortly after purchase and before feeding them. Leftovers from fresh food that have not been eaten should be removed daily so that they do not become mouldy. House crickets are very susceptible to diseases.
    • Dry food: wheat bran, muesli, fish food, oatmeal, rodent pellets
    • Fresh feed: fruit and vegetables, sprouts and leaves of various meadow herbs
    • Vitamin preparations: e.g. cricket breeding concentrate

    Expose in the garden

    At some point, many breeders have too many crickets in their terrarium which, because of their size, can no longer be fed to smaller reptiles. However, you should not release the excess animals outside, as they can quickly spread en masse there. If you breed animals that accept house crickets even when dried or frozen, you should refrain from breeding them.

    digression

    crickets in the apartment

    House crickets are more likely to be found in the house because they find suitable living conditions and enough food here. There is usually no risk of mass spread within your own four walls. The reason for this is the lack of substrates that are suitable for laying eggs. However, it can multiply in heated greenhouses or in warm and humid rooms where potted plants are located. The chirping annoys all residents of the house, so that suitable measures to combat it are necessary.

    Combat with home remedies

    There is no reason to panic if there are a few crickets in the garden or in the apartment

    A few animals can still be easily caught and moved. In the case of a massive increase, this measure no longer helps. A first method to get rid of house crickets is to remove the food base. Make sure the crickets can't find any more food. However, this is not so easy, as the animals also spread out in the storage cellar and, when resources are scarce, do not even stop at textiles. Various methods of combating it with home remedies are therefore useful.

    Fighting with home remedies is gentler on the environment and health and less expensive.

    Hot water

    If you have discovered a breeding ground, you should suck off clutches and larvae that have already hatched. Thorough cleaning ensures that all eggs are eliminated. Wipe the breeding ground with a wet cloth. Larvae and eggs, located deeper in niches and cracks, cope well with moisture and water. Therefore, use hot water for cleaning, so that the temperature in the air rises and kills larvae.

    sweet bait

    To get rid of adult house crickets, you can make your own bait. To do this, you need an attractant that the insects cannot resist. This attractant should be set up in the form of a sticky liquid. If a house cricket hops in, it sticks to the mass. With further movements, the insect sinks into the liquid and drowns.

    Step-by-step instructions:

    1. Mix sugar cane molasses with hot water (ratio 1:4)
    2. Let the mass cool down
    3. pour into shallow bowls
    4. set up in different places in the house

    Sticky traps with honey or molasses

    You can build your own glue trap with double-sided glue bench. Place the tape in nooks and crannies under cupboards and coat the tape with molasses or honey. The sweet scent attracts the insects that stick to the tape when trying to eat. The disadvantage of this method is that the animals die slowly due to lack of food.

    Barriers with pepper and vinegar

    Both spices can be found in almost every household. However, house crickets do not like the intensely pungent smell, so you can use pepper and vinegar to scare them away. Brush entryways to supplies and potential entryways to retreat alcoves with vinegar and sprinkle with pepper. The barrier lasts about two to three days until the odor wears off. You should then renew the hiking barrier. With continuous repetition, the insects will start looking for other food sources and hopefully disappear from your home.

    Make Natural Insecticide

    The sap from the roots of the yellow water lily (Nuphar lutea) contains toxic alkaloids that are deadly to house crickets. Squeeze the rhizomes of the aquatic plant or shred the leaves. The plant juice is mixed with fresh milk in a ratio of 2:1 and refined with a little honey. The mixture is spread on the surfaces in front of the hiding places. After the house crickets lick up the juice, they die.

    Fight chemically

    Feeding baits, sticky traps or insect sprays can be used to get rid of house crickets in the home. They work in different ways and are used where the insects retreat during the day. While the trap does not contain any toxic ingredients, gels and sprays use various toxins. Unlike sticky traps, these destroy the crickets within a short period of time, but entail further dangers. In addition, they must be applied several times until all insects have been killed.

    effect disadvantage
    contact insecticides fatal signs of paralysis harmful to the environment and health
    eating bait fatal after admission contains toxic insecticides
    sticky traps Attraction by pheromones slow death

    way of life

    Crickets avoid the light. Therefore, their chirping noises can be heard mainly from dusk. If they have found a shady place, their sounds can also be heard in the late morning. But as a rule, the insects hide in their caves or in warm, humid niches during the day. During the night they are better camouflaged, so they are hardly noticeable to their enemies.

    Temperatures also play a role in cricket activity. At warm temperatures around 30 degrees Celsius, the crickets show their optimum level of activity. The lower the thermometer sinks, the more immobile the insects become. If the temperatures are too hot, they can no longer optimally regenerate their water balance and die.

    males versus females

    Males and females differ in their front wings. While these show an even diamond pattern in the females, the males have special structures on the wing surfaces. With these they produce noises that are typical of the species. They erect their forewings and spread them outward. They are then rubbed against each other inwards and outwards, resulting in the typical chirping sounds. These tones are sometimes referred to as chants because they sound melodic. The chirping serves several purposes.

    The sounds of crickets:

    • courtship chirp: three different melodies to impress females
    • mating chirp: short-syllabic melody just before pairing
    • territory chirping: particularly loud sounds are supposed to drive away competitors

    digression

    stridulation

    This technical term covers a form of noise production that is typical for house crickets, grasshoppers and longhorn beetles. They rub certain body parts together to communicate with their fellows. Crickets have a particularly rough vein on the right wing, which is equipped with 140 fine teeth. There is a flashing edge on the left wing. When the house crickets rub their wings together, their teeth begin to vibrate. They produce a soft chirping, which is amplified by a flexible membrane in the wing and spread throughout the environment.

    Crickets vs crickets

    The steppe cricket is also often bred as food for reptiles

    Crickets represent a family with more than a hundred species. These include species such as house crickets, steppe crickets, Mediterranean crickets or short-winged crickets, which are preferably used as food for farmed reptiles. They differ in size and development times. Jumping behavior and vocalizations also show differences.

    Sounds jumping behavior breeding
    house cricket according to big jumps simple
    Mediterranean cricket extremely loud only jumps a little a little harder
    steppe cricket quietly hardly jumps simple
    Short-winged cricket moderate very long jumps simple

    hatching of the larvae

    About two to three days after mating, females lay their eggs in the moist soil. The clutch can contain between 800 and 2,600 eggs. The number depends largely on the diet of the female. If it has eaten mostly animal food, more eggs will be produced than with a plant-based diet.

    The eggs are able to absorb moisture. This causes them to swell, doubling their weight. Certain temperatures are required for larvae to hatch. If the temperature is 16 degrees Celsius, it takes about 54 days to develop into a larva. If the thermometer shows a constant 35 degrees Celsius, the larvae hatch after about eight days.

    Ideal substrates for egg laying:

    • leftover vegetables
    • sawdust
    • potting soil

    development

    The initially light-colored larvae have no wings and can therefore only crawl. They go through between nine and 16 larval stages until they molt into adult house crickets. This development lasts between 80 and 130 days and depends on temperature and food supply. Given enough plant-based food, they complete their development within ten weeks.

    What do crickets eat?

    House crickets are omnivores, feeding on both plant debris and animal tissue. Animal food is preferred because it provides more energy and the house crickets can reproduce better as a result. They are considered to be good digesters of kitchen scraps, food leftovers and carrion.

    The crickets cover their water requirements with the food, so they like to eat water-rich food. Since they do not shy away from food in the household, house crickets are considered hygiene pests. When food is inferior or scarce, cannibalism can occur.

    Natural enemies

    The predators include all animals that feed on larger insects. House crickets have no toxic ingredients. They are rich in protein and can hardly defend themselves against larger predators. Their only protection is the darkness of the night. If danger threatens, the insects withdraw into niches and caves.

    These animals eat house crickets:

    • ants, spiders and wasps
    • birds and bats
    • frogs and lizards

    House crickets are delicious food for birds

    Natural habitat

    The species originally comes from the dry areas of Africa. In East Africa crickets can be found up to an altitude of 2,600 meters. Today they can be found worldwide and also occur in cooler regions. The first descriptions of the species in Germany date back to the 16th century.

    In Europe, however, they are tied to human settlements. House crickets feel comfortable in habitats with high humidity. If the temperatures are also consistently high, the insects will find optimal living conditions. Both factors are present in the compost, which develops high temperatures through fermentation processes and has constant moisture.

    These are typical retreats:

    • greenhouses
    • basement, cellar
    • wet subway shafts

    winter

    Outside of human settlements, house crickets would not survive winters in central Europe and other cooler regions outside of Africa. They have not evolved mechanisms to survive freezing temperatures, because in their natural habitat overwintering is not necessary. As soon as winter comes, animals die in nature. Once they find a warm and humid retreat, they can survive the chilly season.

    frequently asked Questions

    How old do crickets get?

    The life expectancy of insects depends on temperature and food availability. Although their development is faster at temperatures around 35 degrees Celsius, they do not survive the heat very long. At an optimal temperature of between 28 and 30 degrees Celsius, the insects have a lifespan of twelve weeks.

    What do crickets like to eat the most?

    The crickets prefer animal food, although they also eat plant food as they are omnivores. In order to successfully breed the insects, the food supply plays a major role. House crickets prefer lettuce, carrots or oatmeal.

    How do house crickets breed?

    If a male has lured a potential partner into his own arena with his luring melodies, he will do his best again. Females feel the males with their feelers and listen to the melodies with their ears, which are on the legs. If she likes the concert, she mounts the male. These transfer a sac filled with sperm to the female.

    When do house crickets fly?

    Although crickets have fully developed and functional wings, they rarely use them. Their flights can only be observed in exceptional cases when temperatures are very high.

    When do crickets chirp?

    The mating spectacle of the crickets extends from the end of April to the end of June. Then the males sit in a place near their self-dug burrows. These burrows are up to 20 centimeters long. The males, who once hatched from the eggs under the protection of the burrows, use the tunnels as a retreat in case of danger. Their monotonous luring melodies ring out from dusk until well into the night.

Category:

Animals in the garden