dubia roach colony questions

Anybody got any tips? Would they do alright/breed at room temp if I kept the humidity up? Are water crystals good to use? What should I keep them in?? I was thinking I'd start with 20 medium roaches and see how that goes. I just want a small colony, ya know

I'm planning on feeding them to my tarantulas and hopefully having a thriving colony by the time I get my monitor in 6 ish months 😛

Correct me if I'm wrong about anything please!

I keep ours in my wifes reptile room. Temps in there are between 70 to 80 degrees through out the day.
My roaches blew up to the point that I was giving them to anyone I could find that thought they needed them.
They do not get any heat.

depending on the number of tarantulas and the size of the monitor you may be needing a larger colony. I keep mine on the top shelf in my reptile room which is a steady 82 degrees and they breed fairly well. when i've bumped them up to the low 90s they produce like crazy. and when I put them in a cooler room they slow down. I keep a constant supply of water gel with them. I give them a dry food once a week and fresh fruit once a week. removing the left over remains of fruit the next day. mold will wipe out a colony with a quickness. I keep them in 64 qt totes with a 6inch square cut out of the lid and covered with window screen for ventilation. i'm not on here much so feel free to hit me up on FB or email if you have any other questions.

I keep mine on the top of one of my snake racks where it's quite warm and they do well there, I feed them nothing but veggies (kitchen scraps) they go nuts for oranges, they don't seem to care all that much for grain products (breads crackers etc) . They would not breed for me at typical room temps. One thing to remember is do NOT feed off your breeders. People assume that they 'breed like roaches' but in actuality these are tropical roaches and not your typical pest species. It can take 6 months or more (depending on temps) for them to reach sexual maturity. I've known several people who have crashed their colonies by feeding off the biggest ones to their monitors or dragons. (actually you can feed off the males, you really don't need that many, but leave the breeding size females alone)

This is great advice! I've just setup my dubia colony and gotten them in mail today. It looks like my adult male died in transit, but the female was fine as were all the other small ones (there are several juvie males, so I think I'll be ok in that dept) I've got mine in a 54qt. container with a dish of dry "roach chow", a dish of water crystals, and a slice of orange and spinach leaves. The tub has a UTH attached to it on a thermostat set to about 97f (bottom of tub temps at 85 and ambient in the tub is ambient in my reptile room, about 75f).

OP: I don't want to hijack your thread, but I thought I'd ask one question that you might want to know the answer to as well.

How do you guys clean your tubs (how often, what do you use, etc.)? and do you use a "clean up crew" I was advised by several people to add a cleaning crew, but don't know what benefit it would be and if that would effect how I would need to clean the tub out.

If you use a cleaning crew you don't need to clean your tubs often at all for any roaches. Just add dermestids if waste is building up. The nymphs will burrow in the refuse/ substrate. Another good roach tip is to mix a bunch of dry food with coco husk for substrate, add thin slices of oranges once a week and as long as the temps are above 80 they will reproduce, optimum reproduction seems to be around 84-85 for discoids, Dubia are similar.

Thanks! Most people I spoke to said to use no substrate at all, but I guess that applies if you don't use clean up insects. I'll have to figure things out. I'd like to interact with the colony (cleaning, etc.) as little as possible, so anything I can do to make it a self-sustaining unit is great.

What is a "clean up crew"? I recently got into breeding Dubias, I do not use any substrate at all and am about to do my first "cleaning" of their container. I have another container to transfer them to and I'm still trying to figure out how I'm going to move the stragglers. Just trying to find out the best way to keep and clean these guys?