My Roach Setup

I currently breed, dubia, discoids, fumigata, craniifer, hissers, lateralis. Heres a few pictures!

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Look great! I cant wait until my discoid is producing enough to feed my two little kids.

Discoids are slow breeders which sucks, but once they get going and your not feeding the adult females off they are great!

Hey I was looking to start a dubia colony because I plan on purchasing some monitors, and other lizard this summer. How many roaches can you house in those containers you use? And if I ordered 1000 of them, how long do you think it would take until I can start feeding out my colony? Thanks for your help!

very cool ;) thanks for sharing!
I tried my hand at discoids....got frustrated and fed them off.
Now I'm doing the lobster roaches with great success :D
My colony has more than tripled in a month :gj:

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Originally Posted by STORMS

very cool ;) thanks for sharing!
I tried my hand at discoids....got frustrated and fed them off.
Now I'm doing the lobster roaches with great success :D
My colony has more than tripled in a month :gj:

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Lobsters are great except they climb and stink, to much like crickets for me. I prefer the non climbing non flying species like lateralis. They do have a slight smell to them and they look like a common roach but they dont stink half as bad as lobsters do!

dsmalex97, I have 3k+ mix in one of my 45gallon blue containers with. Thats a mix of adults and nymphs. If you ordered 1000 mix dubia and let them grow up for 2 months and then give one more month for them to start producing you should be fine feeding off a few hundred per week. One adult female will have 20-30 babies per month. If you interested in getting some just shoot me a pm.

How are the fumigata? I'm thinking of picking up a bunch.

Also, how big are the nymphs, think they'd be small enough for Strophurus geckos?

Very slow breeders! They are about half the size of dubia, dubia nymphs are small also about 3/8". What size prey are you feeding now?

Thanks!
But damn, I had heard they bred similar to dubias.

1/4 inch crickets. Not worried about them now, the hatchlings would need something smaller than dubia tho, I had heard that fumigata was about half the size of dubia.

maybe my info is just all wrong.

They are half the size of dubia but they do breed slower than my dubia also. If you need something that small I would stick with lateralis and dubia.

Hey do you think it would be safe to feed whites tree frogs dubia nymphs?

I have never kept tree frogs, what do you feed them now? Dubia's shell isnt as hard as crickets so whatever you feed crickets to you can feed dubia to.

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Originally Posted by Clear

Lobsters are great except they climb and stink, to much like crickets for me. I prefer the non climbing non flying species like lateralis. They do have a slight smell to them and they look like a common roach but they dont stink half as bad as lobsters do!

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I guess so far I have been lucky...my lobsters have ZERO smell at all ;)

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Originally Posted by STORMS

I guess so far I have been lucky...my lobsters have ZERO smell at all ;)

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I was also keep thousands, I dont know how many you are keeping. But if they are working for you thats great!

I agreed, my lobsters are odor free too! I have over 10k. :)

I feed them plenty of fresh veggies/fruit along with my roach mix. It consists of high quality Dog Food, Kashi Brand Cereals, Oatmeal, Grains, etc (all blended). The diet seems to keep them stink free (I guess), and the mix itself smells good!

As for their evilness escaping, I use olive oil on the tub. A very thin layer right at the top. It seems to last a lot longer than Vaseline too. Besides, I had escapes using Vaseline, I don't with olive oil.

As far as feeding them off, I do something similar. I take a REALLY thin layer of olive oil and spread it in the food dish, wipe it down with a few dry paper towels and no escapes.

Unfortunately, as much as I'd like to keep dubias, I own far too many inverts/lizards to be able to wait..that and I'm very impatient. :D

Eventually, I'd like to have several colonies of different species set up, like you! That is wicked awesome! Thanks for sharing!!

Nice roaches! Never knew roaches could come in so many shapes and sizes. When I get some lizards, I will definitely be raising roaches!

Thanks, yea I plan to expand these colonies also. But the others arnt exactly feeder roaches they are more of a novelty pet. As far as lobster go I was keeping 50k+ in 5 different bins, if I didnt do monthly cleaning they would start to smell. Dubia do take a while to establish thats the down side to them.

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Originally Posted by Clear

Discoids are slow breeders which sucks, but once they get going and your not feeding the adult females off they are great!

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Bleh I mean Dubias, either way they are slow breeders. I had great success with Lobsters but I do not want to deal with climbing insects again, crickets suck as it is.

Great looking set-up!

Thanks!

Dubia and discoids are very close except the discoids get a little bigger as adults.

How long does it take Dubia to establish themselves to the point you can start feeding some off?

That depends on how many you start with and how many you want to feed off. One adult female has 20-30 babies a month. It takes about 3 months for them to reach adulthood.

Hi,

I might start to breed dubias and I have a few questions. If anyone can answers these it would be a good help.

So lets say I put 500 adult dubias into a 30 gallon tub. Do I have to seperate the babies? I mean what if I don't want more than 500 adults. Could I just feed off the babies once they get "half way" to adulthood? Is there anything so negatively severe that would keep one from keeping the babies with the adults? Do the adults eat the babies?

Any if I did this, I wouldn't have to wait for them to establish, right? I could just feed the babies off when they were 3-4 weeks old.

Thanks,

Austin

If you started off with 500 adults you would have a ton of babies per month! They do not eat each other and you can feed off all you want just not the adults.

Alrighty... about how small are the babies?

around the 1/4" mark

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Originally Posted by Clear

If you started off with 500 adults you would have a ton of babies per month! They do not eat each other and you can feed off all you want just not the adults.

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Good luck finding, let alone paying for, 500 adults. A typical price on a mix nymph package is 30-40 bucks for 100, which usually only includes a couple of adult pairs.

Clear, our dubias are coming Wed/Thurs...what size tub do you recommend for a mix 500? The breeder suggested a 66qt, but that seems a bit small to me, especially if you are running with 45gallons.

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Originally Posted by ThyTempest

Good luck finding, let alone paying for, 500 adults. .

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Thanks, but I don't need it :salute:

Im sure he could find someone selling adults, but paying for it about put you out and about a life times supply of ordered crickets. I think one place sells their adults for 2.50 per pair.

I house thousands in my 45gallon tubs. I counted last night 350 adult females 250 adult males and thousands of nymphs in just one 45gallon tub! My clear tubs that I use is 73qt and they work great also, I wouldnt house my big colony in those tho.

Good luck with getting 500 adults, females typically run around $2-$2.50 each!
500 mix which sometimes include adults are $125 on avg and 1000 mix is usually $225 on avg