# Locust breeders help



## fergaljay (Mar 24, 2009)

Hi, I have just set up my 6 adult locusts to try to get them to breed and with in a few hours 2 of them were!! wooooooo
The only thing is ive now come back from work and they have got off one another but there are no holes in the sand :-( 

Does it take time before she lays and do i need certain sand??


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## chriscommunist (Jun 21, 2009)

It'll take longer than that.


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## Jim2109 (Mar 30, 2009)

ive had no success with sand, not to say it doesnt work. but ive decided to go with a 50/50 sand soil mix now and the eggs get laid in a more conventional manner.

in sand i didnt notice any holes, so figured no eggs had been laid. started tipping sand out and found several hundred eggs. the sand had just collapsed back in around them. so just because you cant see marks, dont assume there arent any eggs laid. it does tend to take a few days before they lay though it seems.

either switch out the sand for a sand/soil mix now before any laying happens, or stick with the sand. either way, keep it moist all the time.


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## fergaljay (Mar 24, 2009)

ive got 2 jars in there, one with sand and now im gonna fill the other with 50/50 and see what they prefer

thanks


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## Jim2109 (Mar 30, 2009)

i just had my first hoppers hatch out of sand!! the key though is to keep it very damp, mine was too dry and as soon as ive started to dampen it more ive got results


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## fergaljay (Mar 24, 2009)

mine are now not mating :-( im hoping they start again!

Ive lost on and bought some more as there were only a couple in there and the new batch are really dark whereas the others are really yellow!!

Is there any way of identifying male and female??


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## Jim2109 (Mar 30, 2009)

its hard to identify males and females until they are on top each other. there are slight variances in size (females slightly larger), females tend to have bigger heads, and they also have a different tip to their abdomen. its tough to see these things until youve got 2 on top of each other to make a direct comparison.

personally id stick more in there, i started with 24, a handful died off, ive since added a further 12 plus some of the babies i bought to feed my CWD's that were too large have been added and now grown to adults. 

i think there are more males than females because there are always "spare" locusts that arent mating and they look smaller. its luck of the draw really, its not like roaches where they are clearly distinguishable.

if they arent mating then check your temperatures and light. temperature wants to be at least 29°C, ideally more like 31-32°C. and there needs to be lots of light for at least 12 hours per day. get a light bulb in there to solve both of these issues if they need solving.


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## fergaljay (Mar 24, 2009)

I have 10 locusts in there at th moment and one of my newest ones started mating straight away as soon as they got in there and another one was trying to but with no success until he finally gave up lol - I dont have any artificial light in it though it is just on the window with a heat mat under it


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## Jim2109 (Mar 30, 2009)

fergaljay said:


> I have 10 locusts in there at th moment and one of my newest ones started mating straight away as soon as they got in there and another one was trying to but with no success until he finally gave up lol - I dont have any artificial light in it though it is just on the window with a heat mat under it


it will need more heat than that then, heatmats dont heat the air enough, get a light bulb over it.

also buy your locusts as XL's, not adults if you arent doing this already. they usually shed within a week or 2 into adults, then take a few weeks to mature. but this way you get 100% of their mature adult life for breeding. if you buy as adults then they might only have a couple of weeks of life left in them.


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## forteh (Feb 9, 2009)

I filled mine with boxes of adults bought from my local shop, search through them and choose the pinkest ones, these are recently moulted and still immature - when they mature they will take on their adult colours. Yellow for males and a tan/beige for females, you can also differentiate the females by having a longer abdomen, generally it will be the same length as their wings.

A female locust










A male locust










Sorry for the crap photos, my camera is ancient and crap 

Fergaljay, you need more heat, I have a 60W spotlamp on a dimmer switch, I get 90*F directly below the lamp with sticks arranged around to give the closer basking spots up to 115*F. The far cool sides of the enclosure are at about 75*F. The bulb is on a timer 7:30 - 21:30 and a statted heatmat on the back wall keeps a night time temp of about 75 degrees. The stat is set so that it whacks the mat on full but turns off once the bulb is on. If I could get warmer night temps then they would be laying more.

You need to give huge amounts of surface area for them to moult and bask, aswell as sticks Ive added some plastic meshing that the cling onto. Without enough space to moult they die and get eaten by the others.


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## acker123 (Jun 3, 2009)

ive just caught my first two mating and am wondering how long after this they will begiin to lay, straight away? or does it take a week or so?
cheers


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## forteh (Feb 9, 2009)

Hard to say, were they locked together or just riding each other?

Once the females have been fertilised they usually wait a while before going and probing the media for suitability. They will stick their back end in for about 10 minutes and then bugger off leaving a hole, they come back after a while and stick it back in the sand - I think it takes 30-40 minutes to lay the eggs, you should see the white spidersilk type backfilling they use.

I had an adult this morning that laid a batch of eggs, backfilled it to the top and then proceded to lay another set and backfill ontop of the media - silly cow!
The 1st coulpe of times I had eggs they just laid them in the corner and they obviously dried up, with time they will find the sand and lay in it.


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## acker123 (Jun 3, 2009)

they were properly locked woop!
cheers for the info


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## Ellis (Jul 27, 2008)

not to hijack the thread, but do your setups smell bad, and make the room there in smell bad?

i used to have a little setup and it stank the room out?

cheers, Ellis


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## acker123 (Jun 3, 2009)

Ellis said:


> not to hijack the thread, but do your setups smell bad, and make the room there in smell bad?
> 
> i used to have a little setup and it stank the room out?
> 
> cheers, Ellis


nope not at all. i have between 20-30 adults in a 36"x12"x15" aquarium with a mesh roof and no smell whatsoever.


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## Ellis (Jul 27, 2008)

acker123 said:


> nope not at all. i have between 20-30 adults in a 36"x12"x15" aquarium with a mesh roof and no smell whatsoever.


cool, i am going to put them in a 4x1.5x1.5 wooden viv.

do you incubate the baby ones in the viv its self?

what do you feed them?

cheers, Ellis


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## acker123 (Jun 3, 2009)

Ellis said:


> cool, i am going to put them in a 4x1.5x1.5 wooden viv.
> 
> do you incubate the baby ones in the viv its self?
> 
> ...


i feed mine mostly nettles, occasionaly putting in grass. i will incubate mine in the viv as it uses up less room and it is about 29C near the bulb.
however mine have only just begann to breed so i may haveto change things if they dont hatch


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## Jim2109 (Mar 30, 2009)

Ellis said:


> not to hijack the thread, but do your setups smell bad, and make the room there in smell bad?
> 
> i used to have a little setup and it stank the room out?
> 
> cheers, Ellis


mine smell quite bad. if the door or window is left open the room is fine, but the door stays closed all the time and it pongs a bit when you walk in. not badly, its just a background smell, and it doesnt spread around the house at all. crickets smell just as bad in much smaller quantities.


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## acker123 (Jun 3, 2009)

caught another two mating...

pics are blurry because i accidently kept the macro on. woops


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## ex0tics (Jun 9, 2009)

Tanks smell after the first day, the heat doesn't help.


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## little li (Mar 26, 2009)

i have just got my first lot of babies and i wasn't trying to breed i use wooden cat litter pellets in the bottom of my tank and they layed in that i have used soil pots in the past but gave up when nothing happened


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## forteh (Feb 9, 2009)

Mine tank only smells if I havent cleaned it out for a fortnight and theres a fair amount of old cabbage or dead locusts in there. I have a suspended mesh floor so all the crap falls through where I can easily hoover it up, takes about a minute to clean them out


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## fergaljay (Mar 24, 2009)

Ive just got back today and I have 2 holes in the sand yayyyyyyyyyyyy
One with eggs in and the other empty (I can see because they did it at the edge of the glass)

I hope they hatch an this is without th extra light source like I said they are just in the window!! They get the morning sun tho!

Do you think i should get a lamp on iy too?? They are housed in a plastic reptile box with vented roof with a little door on so cant put light in it and dont want to melt the plastic putting a light on the outside! :notworthy: Help


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## Jim2109 (Mar 30, 2009)

forteh said:


> Mine tank only smells if I havent cleaned it out for a fortnight and theres a fair amount of old cabbage or dead locusts in there. I have a suspended mesh floor so all the crap falls through where I can easily hoover it up, takes about a minute to clean them out


how do you get on with a mesh floor? ive been considering this, just wondering how much waste actually falls through? hatchling hoppers are pretty damn small, so the mesh couldnt be TOO small. id say that lots of the adult locust poop probably isnt far off the size of a hopper in my tank lol, maybe a bit thinner without the gangly legs sprawling off it it, obviously. but id be worried about hoppers getting through.

ive been trying to figure out ideas like this, as cleaning out a tank full of flying and jumping locusts is incredibly difficult, as i discovered yesterday. 2 escapees later and im no closer lol

so im trying to design a new setup that is more practical.


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## forteh (Feb 9, 2009)

Fergal, if you want to get that batch of eggs hatched (should be about 20-30 hoppers) take the pot out, cover it with clingfilm and put it in a polybox with a heatmat, use a stat to keep it to about 81-82*F on the top of the media. I put a layer of egg tray over the heatmat for the pots to sit on, doesnt dry the media out so quick 

Jim, the mesh floor works really well, its quite an open mesh (10x20mm diamonds) but Ive welded 2 layers at 90 degrees to each other to reduce the size down. 99% of the crap falls through and dries at the bottom ready to be hoovered up, the adults cant fit through the mesh but sometimes manage to squeeze through one of the gaps at the side; not a problem just grab them out from underneath and put them back into the main box. Anything smaller than 4th instar can get through the mesh but it doesnt seem to be an issue as they just climb back up to the food and heat. Just need to check its clear before hoovering:blush:

Im not really keeping any hoppers in the main box yet (I have a couple in there to see how they cope) so its not an issue, Im planning on leaving the hoppers in cricket tubs till the 1st moult and then putting them into the box.


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## fergaljay (Mar 24, 2009)

How long does it yake for them to hatch??


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## fergaljay (Mar 24, 2009)

Any other tips for making sure these eggs hatch?? :blush:


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## forteh (Feb 9, 2009)

I put the tubs in the incubator on a thursday and they hatched during the thursday a fortnight afterwards


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## fergaljay (Mar 24, 2009)

foteh did you buy an incubator or have you made your own?? Im going to have to make my own to save costs


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## forteh (Feb 9, 2009)

Used an old polybox (that had a crestie delivered in it) and popped a heatmat in the bottom with the eggtray for the pots to sit on. Clingfilm over the top of the pots to retain some moisture, when they get closer to hatching at about 10 days its probably worth changing the clingfilm for some dry stuff - not sure about the hatchlings but moisture kills locusts very quickly.

The heatmat is a crappy exoterra 4w thing, in open air it barely manages to get to 80 degrees. In the polybox its keeping it just the right temp without a stat so dont see the need to fit one. The top of the eggtray is about 90*F and the outside of the pots are 88 at the bottom up 81 at the top.


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## tony4581 (Mar 11, 2011)

*urjunt help needed*

Hi my name is tony I need help iv never bred thes befor but though it be nice for my taratula to eat but only had them for a week but they are dying off so quick why are they dying I puttin fresh food and water in every day I even let the adults out in a slall room to let them run about I also been trying to breed crickets but they won't lay eggs can somone please help me cos if I can't get this to work I will have to rehome them contact me on 07543993774 or 07518946549 [email protected]


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