# My loctust set up



## swinder (Jan 18, 2009)

Ok, so i triued doing this a while ago in a old fish tank but the hassel got the better of me.. So i decidend to make anothe tank. I had an old fish tank stand that i couldnt sell for love nor money.

Here are some photos of it.

It has a small light in it for heat and a false floor with a tin foil floor under that. 

The idea of the flase floor is to make it easier to clear up. The tin foil instead of the kitchen roll makes it easier to clear up by using a small hoover. The small section under neath is for the tubs as the eggs hatch.


Its only been set up for a few days so im hoping in a months time i should see some results.

Any comments are welcome.


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## forteh (Feb 9, 2009)

Looks pretty good, a couple of pointers though

The false mesh floor idea works really well if you can open the tank to clean it without any escaping, cant tell from the photo if thats possible. I used an upwards sliding acrylic front so that I could keep the adults contained above the mesh but still hoover underneath.

Your lay tub is going to need to be at least twice as deep as that though, a cricket tub full to the brim isnt enough, needs to be about 1 1/2 cricket tubs deep, Ive found 5" flowerpots of vermiculite are perfect 

I would also get some more ventilation in there, Ive got 6 x 70mm meshed vents in my box. Without enough ventilation you may find that if one adult dies the humidity will go up and kill a whole load of them.

Also try to give them alot of hanging space near the lamp, use some of the mesh to make perches otherwise you will lose alot of moulting 5th instars.

Get some heat for your hopper tubs, otherwise they wont want to eat and will grow very, very slowly. A heatmat in the bottom of the tank is sufficient as long as it can keep it at about 80*F. You may also find you need more space for the hatchling tubs, Im filling a tub a day at the moment (approx 50 per tub) and the hatchling nursery is filling up nicely. Once they have moulted to 2nd instar they get moved to a large flat faunarium kept on a heatmat.

Good luck, and keep em well fed, I got 900 hatchlings from 35 breeding adults in a month


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## swinder (Jan 18, 2009)

Excellent thanks for the advise.

Its a one peice of acrylic sliding horizontallly. I can open it without them jumping everywhere at the moment, But would like to get it to have two sliding dooors. One covering the false floor and the other the main part. Will see how it goes to see if i need to change it slightly.

Ventilation wise, there is some small drilled holes at the top and on the side. I have some vents which i was going to put on there but thought i would give it ago like this before i start drilling.

I plan to put some more climbing things in there for them to moult onto rather than just cllimbing up the wall.

I probably havent planned for that many hoppers at this point. And when they start producing I shall have to work around that. I hhave 2 bearded dragons and a ackie who will happpily much their way through.

Any more advise will be greatly appreicated and if and when i get some results i shall up date


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## forteh (Feb 9, 2009)

Once you start getting eggs laid (you should see the female probing and they laying, you may not see any holes though) move the lay tub into an incubator. I use a polybox with a small heatmat in the bottom (its a crap 4w exo terra one that I wont use on any reps, however it holds a polybox at perfect temperature without a stat  ) and incubate at about 80*F, takes about 2 weeks at that temperature before they hoppers hatch.

Depending on the laying substrate you will need to keep it moist but not wet. Ive found that mixing finely graded soil/eco earth and vermiculite evenly works well, make sure its well compacted to enable it to hold together when a hole is poked in it. Before putting into the incubator I sweep the locust crap off the top, spray till its moist and cover with clingfilm to keep it moist. Check it every so often and replace the clingfilm if its beading water.

Here is my thread with the setup, Ive since changed it slightly, the right hand side is now used as the nursery, there is a mesh flap covering the hole in the middle which allows easy feeding of the adults without opening the main front up.


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## swinder (Jan 18, 2009)

Yeah it was your thread that gave me the idea for the flase floor. I had had enough of having to remove the adults each time i wanted to change the kitchen roll on the floor.

Hopefully see the results as my reps are costing me a fortune on locusts.


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## Jim2109 (Mar 30, 2009)

im still using a large RUB for mine. no false floor or anything. to clean them i just reach in through the mesh and mosquito net ive got on top (none ever escape past my arm) and sweep all the mess to one corner. any adults just move out of the way, babies soon get out of the way when they are getting buried in poop. once ive got it all piled in one corner i stick the hoover nozzle down to it, and then press it on and off very quickly so that it doesnt develop too much suction and only sucks the dirt up slowly. that way i can check that babies arent getting hoovered away and it doesnt suck adults in from further out. 

it works just fine. the ONLY problem with my setup is egg laying - i reckon about 30-50% of all eggs get mislaid, e.g. on the floor of the viv and not in the soil pots. it would be better if the soil pots started at ground level, e.g. were sunk into the floor. aside from that its perfect.

it still doesnt yield enough youngsters to feed off though. i dont reckon it ever will. mortality rates are very high during the first 2 sheds. im sticking at it though.


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## forteh (Feb 9, 2009)

Ive not had any problems with mortality as long as the hatchlings are seperated into cricket tubs and kept away from the adults, I think having the larger locusts milling around disturbs them too much when shedding. My farm has been pretty quiet the last 2 months (due to not enough time) but its picking up again now Im paying more attention to it.

Growing the locusts on takes quite a while but I got hoppers up to 3rd instar in a couple of weeks, heat and the right food is the key


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## swinder (Jan 18, 2009)

Thanks for the advise.

Im hoping my does fine. Plan to just open the door and stick the nozzle in and clear it up in one go. We shall see how it goes


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## swinder (Jan 18, 2009)

Quick update

THis morning i have woken to about 2 dozen baby locusts. Whoop whoop. About 8 of them had died thogh as some moisture had built up on he floor of the container and they had drowned. Lesson learnt. more are still appearing now. I think this is the 2nd or 3rd week. 

Basically i am taking the laying tubs out after 1 week and placing them in a large container with a heat mat to keep them warm and so they dont dry out. 

Next question is what do i do with the babies. THey have so far gone into a livefood tub with bran and a egg carton and i have placed some greens in there. Is this all i need to do now and wait for them to start shedding???


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## Jim2109 (Mar 30, 2009)

theyll die trying to shed in a plastic container. they need branches or mesh to hang from. i made this mistake by putting all my babies in a kricket keeper one time. i lost about 200 in one hit. keep the babies in with the adults is the easiest way, they dont eat their young or anything, provided they are well fed at least.


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## swinder (Jan 18, 2009)

Ok willdo. I shall try the plastic container to start with. There is only a dozen or so in there.

Will have to look at other ways as well

]Thanks


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## forteh (Feb 9, 2009)

As an alternative spin....

I collect each batch of hatchlings (about 30-50 at a time) with the pooter and dump them into a cricket tub with bran substrate and a strip of egg carton and feed them twice a day with suitable sized bits of spring green. I keep them in the nursery (the right hand side of my farm box) with a heatmat at about 75-80*F, Ive not had any problems with moulting or mortality.

I keep them in there until 3rd instar (about 20mm long) at which point theyre starting to get a bit crowded. Occasionally Ive seen the start of condensation in the tub, at which point theyve been immediately transferred into a large flat growing on faunarium and put onto a heatmat at 85*F floor temp. They then get fed as needed and hoovered out every week (using jims 'tipping all the crap into the corner and pulsing the hoover button' technique) and will go onto grow to adults.

I dont use any substrate in the faunarium but put 5-6 loose strips of egg tray in there. Once your hoppers are getting much above 3rd instar they will need more height than the egg tray can provide for moulting, at this point I use a full square sheet of egg tray and it wedges nicely into the large flat at an angle and gives loads of room for locusts to moult all the way through to adult. IMHO the maximum number of adults in the faunarium before needing to harvest them is about 25-30, any more than that and they can suffer from humidity problems.

It is important that you remove any dead locusts from both the farm and faunarium as they smell orrible and you risk killing the whole colony form disease/increased humidty from the rotting body. I dont bother cleaning out of the hopper tubs, (if you have loads dieing then transfer them into a fresh tub) the bran usually lasts until theyve moulted enough to go into the faunarium.

I have lost huge slews of hatchlings between 1st and 2nd instar (about 600) before now, they were kept at room temperature and grew very, very slowly - Ive found that heat and fresh food is the key for raising hoppers


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## swinder (Jan 18, 2009)

Your a star with information. It was great getting up this morning and seeing all the little ones inside the tub. The ones i though had drowned i put on a lid infront of some heat and they all dried out and came back to life. Perfect. So thats 20 hatchings so far from batch 1. See what happens to night and see if any more hatch out.

Thanks for all the help again..


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## forteh (Feb 9, 2009)

The hatchlings are tough little buggers, I was in the shower the other week and for some reason looked down, bugger me sideways theres 2 hatchlings in the water! Being the good caring dad that I am, I fished them out and put the on the side. Finished the shower and both were up and about without a problem, put them into my main farm and Im pretty sure theyre both 3rd instar now 

edit: not sure what your arrangements are with the incubating tubs. I put a bit of plastic bag and elastic band it onto the top of the pots, that way it retains moisture (sometimes need to take it off and shake some drips off) and it stops the little ones going all over the place. Once I have some hoppers bouncing around underneath the plastic I put the tub into a 9L rub with the lid adjar just enough for me to get my hands in an pop the elastic band off. That way its easy to spot and catch all the hoppers with the pooter, I get very few escapees that way


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## swinder (Jan 18, 2009)

Just had another 30 hatch over night. Into a new plastic tub they go. At this rate Im going to have hundreds of plastic tubs. good job i have saved them all from my live food. This is all from Week 1 laying. Week 2 has started to hatch yet and week 3 needs to go into the incubator now.


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## forteh (Feb 9, 2009)

I got about 900 in my 1st solid month of hatching, unfortunately I didnt have time to dedicate to the hatchlings and lost most of them to bad husbandry 

Hope youve got some hungry mouths to feed


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