Banded crickets are a fantastic choice for reptile feeders. Compared to the standard brown house cricket, they are hardier, quieter, less prone to odor, and live longer. Their highly active nature also triggers an excellent predatory response in reptiles.
Here is your comprehensive primer on housing, gut-loading, and breeding banded crickets.
1. Setup and Environment Banded crickets need a dry, warm, and highly ventilated space.
Enclosure: Use a large plastic storage tote or a commercial "faunarium." Banded crickets cannot climb clean, smooth plastic, so a tall plastic tote without a lid works perfectly and provides ultimate ventilation. If you must use a lid to keep other pets out, cut out the center and glue in aluminum window screen mesh to ensure maximum airflow.
Hides and Surface Area: Crickets are territorial and will cannibalize each other if they feel crowded or have nowhere to hide while molting. Stack cardboard egg crates or paper towel tubes vertically inside the enclosure. This massively increases the surface area and gives them a dark, safe place to hang out. Temperature: Keep them between 75°F and 85°F. At warmer temperatures, they metabolize faster, grow quicker, and breed more readily. If your room is cold, you can place a reptile heating pad under one side of the tote.
2. Diet and Hydration (Gut-Loading)
Why Gut-Load? The nutritional value of a cricket depends entirely on what it ate right before being fed to your reptile. Proper gut-loading ensures your pet receives essential vitamins and minerals.
Food: Provide a high-quality commercial cricket chow, roach diet, or wheat bran as their staple protein source. Supplement this with fresh, dry vegetables like sliced carrots, sweet potatoes, squash, and dark leafy greens (like collard or mustard greens). Place the food on a shallow dish or paper plate to keep the floor clean. Hydration: Never use an open dish of water. Crickets are incredibly clumsy and will drown in even a shallow puddle. Instead, provide hydration through moisture-rich vegetables or use commercially available water polymer crystals (hydration gel) placed in a shallow dish.
What to Avoid: Avoid citrus fruits, onions, or overly watery fruits like watermelon. High- moisture fruits spoil quickly, attract fruit flies, and can cause the crickets to have runny stools,
which fouls up the enclosure.
3. Daily Care and Maintenance While banded crickets naturally smell much better than house crickets, hygiene is still the secret to keeping them alive long-term. Spot Cleaning: Remove uneaten fresh veggies before they mold, and pick out any dead crickets daily. Dead crickets release ammonia and other gases that can quickly spread and kill off the rest of the colony. Deep Cleaning: Every week or two, transfer the crickets and egg crates to a temporary holding bin. Dump out the "frass" (poop) and shed exoskeletons that have accumulated at the bottom, wipe down the smooth plastic sides, and replace any soiled or damp egg crates. Keep it Dry: The main enclosure must remain completely dry. High humidity combined with cricket waste is the number one cause of foul odors and sudden colony death.
4. Breeding Basics If you want to establish a self-sustaining colony, banded crickets breed readily and easily under the right conditions. The Egg-Laying Box: While the main enclosure must stay dry, adult females need damp soil to lay eggs. Fill a small, shallow plastic container (like a deli cup) with 1 to 2 inches of moist— but not soaking wet—topsoil, peat moss, or vermiculite. Place this inside the main enclosure. Mating and Laying: Mature males will chirp (a much softer, less abrasive sound than house crickets) to attract females. Adult females have a long, needle-like appendage on their rear called an ovipositor. You will see them backing up to the dirt cup and using this appendage to inject eggs beneath the soil. Incubation: After 3 to 5 days, remove the egg-laying box so the adults don't dig up and eat the eggs. Cover the cup with a ventilated lid and place it in a separate, warm container (around 80°F to 85°F). Keep the soil consistently damp by lightly misting it when it starts to dry out. Hatching: In 1 to 2 weeks, tiny "pinhead" crickets will emerge from the soil. Pinheads dry out and die very easily, so keep their enclosure slightly more humid than the adults' and offer them constant access to water gel and finely crushed cricket chow.