How to Make Crickets

What You Need to Have:

• Some peat moss compost (referred to here at "dirt") in a clear tupperware-like container with open tops
• Some egg crates, stood on edge so they don't collect cricket waste
• Hard-bottomed container, like an aquarium
• Something to give them water in without drowning babies, like a chick waterer or some jelly stuff, changed every day or two. (Chick waterer is easiest)
• Heating pad to bring the interior of the container into the 80 degree range
• Food dish of some sort (such as the tupperware-like container's lid)

What You Need to Do:

1. Put your container where you'll want it. Set the heat up; if using a heating pad (recommended) put it under one end of the container. If using a lamp, put an infrared bulb ($10 at a pet store) in and shine it on one end (inferior because it dries the setup faster).
2. To make the setup, put your egg crates on edge at the cold end of the container. Leave some floor space for a food dish, water source, and dirt.
3. Wet the dirt to the correct wetness for potted plants - wet enough to stick in clumps if you squeeze it, but not so wet as to drip. If you use a container that's more than an inch deep, you can soak the lower part (watch the water pool in the bottom), leave the upper part not so wet, and have the excess water wick up into the top part.
4. Put the wet dirt where it'll be warmest in the container. If you're using a heating pad, this would be on top of the pad.
5. Put the food (explained below) and water in.
6. Get some adult crickets. Adults are the ones with wings; if you must buy them smaller, it's fine, but you'll have to wait longer. For a 1'x16"x30" aquarium (a "long 20-gallon"), a starting population of 30 to 50 crickets is not excessive.
7. Wait. After a few days you'll be able to see cricket eggs in the dirt, especially near the corners. They will be very thin, and white. While waiting, keep the dirt at the right wetness, being VERY careful not to flood it (that'd drown the babies).
8. After about 2 weeks of waiting, you should see tiny, miniature crickets hopping about in the dirt. They should feed off the vegetable matter in the dirt for their first few days. It is okay to drop in a couple square centimeters of leafy matter as additional food.
9. Another week and the babies will be big enough (1-2mm) to hop out of the dirt. By this point the original parental generation will be dying off; pull out the biggest looking adult crickets first in order to feed from the colony without overtaxing it. During this phase you may have to buy a few more crickets to fill the generation gap. If you do so, let them breed for a day or two (and lay eggs) so there's not another generation gap down the line.

Cleaning:
Once a month or so, shake all the crickets off the egg crates, sweep all the waste into a corner, and scare them away so you can scoop out the majority of the waste. A booming population will need more frequent cleaning. If you can smell them at all, they need cleaning.

Feeding:
They live on a staple diet of milled grains, like oatmeal. Supplement this with a bit of Fluker's cricket feed for vitamins, or just grind a Centrum into a cup of oats. Fresh fruits (not citrus) or veggies (especially leafy and starchy things) are great treats, but you'll have to remove the remains to prevent odors.

Other Notes:
You'll have to get to know your setup in order to know how hard you can push the population. Keeping the dirt at optimal moisture, and changing it every couple months (put new dirt in a week before pulling the old, so they'll breed into the new dirt), will prevent the breeding failures that lead to population crashes. In a 20-gallon tank, we were pulling out 10 sub-adult size crickets per day, and 2 to 4 adults, and keeping the population steady.

Good luck!