Jerusalem cricket lifespan?

Finally acquired some of these, 3 immatures, to be exact. Here are some pics of the largest one.

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Hopefully I can rear them to adulthood, and then maybe try and breed them. :rolleyes: Aren't they so cute? :P

 
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Hey Cariblatta,

Was the sand you used by any chance calcium sand? Calcium sand is apparently very bad for invertebrates, and makes them sick. Maybe that is why yours died when kept on sand? Because these guys often live in dunes, so I would think they would love sand.

Just curious.

 
Hisserdude said:
Hey Cariblatta,

Was the sand you used by any chance calcium sand? Calcium sand is apparently very bad for invertebrates, and makes them sick. Maybe that is why yours died when kept on sand? Because these guys often live in dunes, so I would think they would love sand.

Just curious.
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I used the sand I collected from Florida near a lake, which may have contained calcium

 
Ah ok. Weird, that should have been just fine for them. Oh well.

Just got another shipment of these guys, I'm up to 8 Jerusalem crickets! Can't wait to try to breed them! :)

 
So my 8 nymphs have been doing very well, a protien rich diet seems to be the key to keeping these. One male nymph does looks pretty sickly at the moment, but the rest are great. One of my males seems to have matured and my largest female just molted to maturity a couple of days ago, man is she big! Now that I have an adult pair I'm going to fatten the female up and attempt to mate them, which I may or may not tape. Hopefully I will be successful, if my male kills her I will be pretty upset...

Here are some pictures of the adult female, (Her name is Swirl, pretty sure you can guess why):

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Wow, I'd never even heard of these before, very cool. Are they US natives or are they introduced? Gorgeous creatures!

All the best from Bill. :D

 
Bufo Bill said:
Wow, I'd never even heard of these before, very cool. Are they US natives or are they introduced? Gorgeous creatures!

All the best from Bill. :D
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They are native to North and Central America, very interesting insects, and big too. Thanks! :)

 
Well, I put my mature male an female in with each other, and it was a surprisingly uneventful experience. They just ran away from each other whenever they touched. I left them in with each other for three days, and I removed the male yesterday, both he and the female were unharmed. Don't know if they mated with each other when I wasn't looking, I sure hope so. Will try re-introducing him to her next week.

 
Haha, turns out my male, (Jiminy), was not mature when I tried to mate him, he was only a subadult. He molted into an adult recently, as evidenced by the two small black hooks in between his cerci that are only present in mature male Jerusalem crickets.

Here are some pictures of him and his genital hooks:

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Genital hooks

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My other male matured, along with two other females, so now I've got two mature pairs, which I have placed together in their own cages. Hopefully I'll see some breeding action from them and maybe get some eggs out of my females! :D

 
Well, a lot of stuff has happened, which I've described in more depth on my blog, but here I'll just try to condense it down to this; Swirl ate Jiminy, he did not mate with her, Tiny, (my second male), and Sam, (another female), did not harm each other after being in the same cage for a week and I separated them, it does not seem like he mated with her either.

I then tried mating Tiny with a different female, Gap, things didn't go so well and due to both mine and Tiny's stupidity Gap bit him on the back, drawing blood. Tiny recovered and I put him in with a different female, Ripper, which after a long and interesting mating ritual ended very successfully as you can see here:

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Hopefully I'll be able to mate him with my other females and get some eggs from them! :D

 
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All About Insects said:
Congrats! :) Would be really cool to see some hatchlings of this species.
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I agree, hopefully I can get some of my females to oviposit! :)

About three days after that first successful pairing, I put Tiny in with Sam, who he had been in with for about a week in a large enclosure previously, however no mating was ever seen. So, just to ensure that she would be fertile, I paired him up with her in my new breeding enclosure, which also ended successfully, as you can see here:

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All About Insects said:
A big congrats! :D I haven't even heard of anyone ever getting eggs from these!
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Thanks! :D  Yeah, besides myself I think the only people who have gotten eggs from these are Smokehound714 on Arachnoboards and David Weissman, and the former only got one egg out of his. 

 
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