Housing:
Something like a gallon jar will work for a decent sized culture, provided you give them lots of surface area, but for a full fledged population you could use as occasional feeders, you'll want something like a 5 gallon sterilite bin. While this species appreciates a good amount of floor space, good height is pretty important as well, seeing as they can jump pretty high when disturbed. These crickets can not climb smooth surfaces, but on account of their jumping skills, a relatively tight fitting lid is recommended.
About an inch or so of substrate in the form of coconut fiber, potting soil, peat moss, etc. works well for this species. Lots of hides in the form of curved bark pieces, eggcrates, or even paper towel rolls, should be provided, and smaller nymphs will hide in leaf litter as well. Camel crickets are usually pretty territorial and protein hungry, so having lots of surface area is very important for them.
This species likes a pretty humid enclosure, with a moderate amount of ventilation, just make sure the ventilation holes aren't big enough for the nymphs to escape from.
Diet:
Dog/cat/chick feed, fruits and veggies work well as their staple diet, and they will scavenge on pre-killed invertebrates as well. They are rather protein hungry, so if they go a while without food or are mostly fed fruits and veggies, they'll start cannibalizing each other pretty quickly.
Food bowls such as plastic milk or juice caps are recommended, however camel crickets are such messy eaters that you'll likely have lots of leftover crumb scattered around the enclosure that you'll need to spot clean every now and then.
Temperature:
They appear able to breed at temps from 70-85F°, and seem to do best in the middle of that temperature range.
Breeding/Life cycle:
Adults live for around 6-8 months, and are easy to sex, as females have a rather long ovipositor that males lack. Females lay at least a few dozen eggs throughout their adult lifespan, which only seem to take 1-2 months to hatch, luckily this species does not need a diapause to get the eggs to hatch, (or at least my strain didn't). The resulting nymphs take 6-8 months to mature under optimal conditions.
Cannibalism rates can be rather high in camel crickets compared to some true crickets, especially amongst the territorial males, but keeping them in a spacious enclosure, providing plenty of hides and surface area, and consistently feeding them protein rich foods will help greatly to keep cannibalism to a minimum. Making sure that there's a lot of little crevices for the small nymphs to hide in by adding leaf litter to the enclosure also helps keep the adults from snacking on them.
One thing I've noticed is that if the substrate gets too dirty with frass, dead bodies, leftover food crumbs, etc., eggs laid in that substrate can start rotting quite quickly, and thus it's a good idea to replace the substrate every generation or two, to ensure maximum hatch rates.
Overall these weird little orthopterans are very interesting to watch, aren't noisy or smelly at all, and are rather easy to provide for. Even if neglected for a week or two, colonies usually don't die off completely, so they are relatively forgiving compared to other cave crickets. Definitely one of the more interesting species I've had the pleasure of keeping!
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