Dubia roach question

[timscrape]

I am going to be ordering dubia roaches online soon. We have been feeding crickets to our pacman but don't like the smell of housing them. We have a large jar of the Fluker's orange cubes for crickets. Here is my question. Can we feed the dubias with the orange cubes, so we dont waste them, or will they not work for dubias? I don't see a reason why they wouldn't work but I'm no expert.

Thanks for the info.

[badkelpie]

You can use them for the roaches.

[yoshimi]

same boat, i fed off the last of my crickets and still had a 3/4 full jar of orange cricket cubes. don't throw it out. the baby roaches seem to like it, about as much as the crickets did, but i haven't tried it with the adults. the babies are my feeders, and i even put 1 or 2 cubes in the center of food bowl. so they can snack before they get eaten.

[unkempt1]

Yea you can use them, but mine will only eat them if there is nothing else in the bin.

[timscrape]

Good. Thanks for the info. That makes it a little easier for me to get the roaches instead of the crickets. Are the dubias easy to culture and keep a colony? I didn't have much luck with culturing the crickets.

[demon amphibians]

You should use the cubes for gut loading purposes to maximize the vitamin intake. The roaches will eat it if it is there only option, And yes roaches are super easy to culture just make sure you read over a care sheet so you know what temps to use and how to house them. You will be very satisfied with Dubia roaches. They beat out the crickets hands down.

[yoshimi]

so true that they beat crickets. my crickets never stank but with all the hopping and dying it was a pain. i keep the baby dubia on a shelf and i would guess it's under 68 degrees, so they don't grow much. i have 34 adults and nearly adults in a bin with heat; got it earlier this month, so no babies for another few weeks. they're molting very well, no deaths. oh, one death when i 1st got them. i won it from my feeder supplier, otherwise i wouldn't have them. it's very easy to keep them simply as feeders. $2 bin from target with holes poked through the lid, some small egg crates, food, and that's all they really need. trying to breed them requires a bit more attention.

[Heatheranne]

Yep, you can use them. Little trick for you...squeeze fresh oranges over them and they'll dig right in .

[timscrape]

Wow! Lots of good info. Thank you guys a lot. It sounds like they are easier to take care of than I thought. I will start another post later with questions on culturing dubias.

[Heatheranne]

They are very easy .

[demon amphibians]

so true that they beat crickets. my crickets never stank but with all the hopping and dying it was a pain. i keep the baby dubia on a shelf and i would guess it's under 68 degrees, so they don't grow much. i have 34 adults and nearly adults in a bin with heat; got it earlier this month, so no babies for another few weeks. they're molting very well, no deaths. oh, one death when i 1st got them. i won it from my feeder supplier, otherwise i wouldn't have them. it's very easy to keep them simply as feeders. $2 bin from target with holes poked through the lid, some small egg crates, food, and that's all they really need. trying to breed them requires a bit more attention.

The only extra attention needed is keep the temps between 90-100 F. Give them oranges.This increases breeding significantly.(Dont squeeze the juice over your roaches It will increase your risk for mold and will help minimally for breeding.) And remove the new babies once a month if you have a small colony the adults breed better when they dont have to compete for food. The rest they do on there own. You can drop in two weeks of dry foods and water cryistals and go on vacation come home and find your colony growing and growing. It just a shame that buying these things are so expensive because they do all the labor.

[unkempt1]

I think Heatheranne was saying squeeze juice on the cubes, not on the roaches. And Yoshimi mentioned the babies in the separate bin don't get heat, but that his adults do. Not trying to be a jerk, just pointing out that both their points look fine.

I would also like to add my experience and two cents. I haven't found any solid proof that oranges provide any extra incentive to breed, I think it's more about hydration, which most fruits provide anyway. That being said, blaptica dubia really don't mind being a little cramped, as long as you practice the proper husbandry.

This is just my personal experience, but when I feed my roaches it's the adults that get to the dinner table first. When I come back to remove what's left a few days later, it's the babies I see sucking the last drops from the rind.

[yoshimi]

I didn't know I was quoted here... Don't think I said anything wrong. Maybe it's because I just started breeding them Dec 28th, with a breeding kit I won. (tho I did mention that in what I was quoted on.) I didn't have a proper bin or a heating element when I found out I won so had to get those before they arrived, and read up on everything they'd need to ensure health and proper breeding. My roaches hadn't become fully mature, so I had to watch and wait as they became adults, which meant checking up on them to make sure everybody was ok, that heat and humidity were right. I still check up on them, as they haven't all become adults yet, and yesterday I found a lady with her ootheca hanging out. So, yay! Because of the heat in there, fresh food could mold and mold kills, so again, still figuring out time frames and how much they eat. Obviously this guy is just starting out, or considering starting out, as I am. Once they've gotten going, I don't forsee any problems. I have enough bins to store baby feeders and a toad with an appetite to eat most of them. And Heatheranne definitely meant squeeze the juice on the cubes, not the roaches, to get them to eat them so they won't be wasted.

No idea is oranges help promote breeding but I've been sharing my oranges and at least one girl is preggo, so it obviously doesn't hurt, as long as you don't leave any in there for too long. They're not devouring the oranges I give them, just a bite here and there, so it may very well be just the humidity or maybe the scent it gives off. Dunno, and the roaches aren't saying.

[Heatheranne]

Yep, you can use them. Little trick for you...squeeze fresh oranges over them and they'll dig right in .

Lol! I meant squeeze the juice over the orange cubes .

[deranged chipmunk]

Heather, heather, heather......you losing your mind as of late? Lol

[timscrape]

Wow! Lots of good info. I joined this forum to help my son keep his pacman alive. I didn't realize how helpful it would be. One more quick question. How big of a colony would you suggest for one pacman?

[demon amphibians]

Yep, you can use them. Little trick for you...squeeze fresh oranges over them and they'll dig right in .

I would like to apologies i totally miss read your comment. fresh oranges squeezed over the cubes would do just nice

[demon amphibians]

Wow! Lots of good info. I joined this forum to help my son keep his pacman alive. I didn't realize how helpful it would be. One more quick question. How big of a colony would you suggest for one pacman?

200-400 would probably be just right. But like i always say the more the better they can only reproduce so fast and if you find that you have to many, you can slow them down or even stop them from breeding by lowering the temperature. Always hold on to some nymphs for future breeders.

[unkempt1]

Wow! Lots of good info. I joined this forum to help my son keep his pacman alive. I didn't realize how helpful it would be. One more quick question. How big of a colony would you suggest for one pacman?

Female dubia produce about 20-30 babies per birth, and if conditions are right can produce young once per month. My pacman will on average eat about 3-6 medium-sized roaches every 2-3 days. That's anywhere from 20-90 roaches a month, and he's about six months old.

You can definitely get 200-400 medium roaches, but depending on his appetite he may go through them all prior to any reaching adulthood. Plus you can't control how many are males or female. You will be the best judge of his appetite. I'd recommend getting maybe 10-20 females, 5 or so males, and about 200 or so mixed sizes. Then you can feed off your colony while they build up. The nymphs that are born will be given time to grow; you can pretty much guarantee a pacman will ignore or not be able to snatch up the smaller nymphs. You will also noticed the females don't always follow the 30 day production rule you try to set for them.

[demon amphibians]

I think Heatheranne was saying squeeze juice on the cubes, not on the roaches. And Yoshimi mentioned the babies in the separate bin don't get heat, but that his adults do. Not trying to be a jerk, just pointing out that both their points look fine.

I would also like to add my experience and two cents. I haven't found any solid proof that oranges provide any extra incentive to breed, I think it's more about hydration, which most fruits provide anyway. That being said, blaptica dubia really don't mind being a little cramped, as long as you practice the proper husbandry.

This is just my personal experience, but when I feed my roaches it's the adults that get to the dinner table first. When I come back to remove what's left a few days later, it's the babies I see sucking the last drops from the rind.

What you said is totally true about hydration. They need a good amount to reproduce effectively, However one of the pet store owners i sell to and I got in an argument about the orange mystery. And he conducted an experiment to prove me wrong. He had the same view point as you. He said it was the water in the oranges that made them breed better. So he took 60 females split them into 3 containers with 20 females and 7 males in each the temp was maintained 95 degrees F in each. In container one he put in fresh apples, in container 2 he put in fresh watermelon, and in 3 he put fresh oranges. every container had the same set up with water crystals and dry food. He conducted this experiment for 2 months, which would allow each female to have one cycle of birth. what he found was the oranges was the least favored of the 3 fruits, with the apple being the most favored. Apples have close to as much moisture as oranges and watermelon which has much more. The apple bin had 480 something young, the watermelon container had 460 something young, and the orange container had roughly 600 something.( i cant remember the exact numbers.) But i won the argument. The hydration in the oranges play a huge factor but it is not the only thing. This was only one experiment so if tried again it may differ. To this day i haven't a clue why oranges influence them to breed quicker and birth larger numbers but I do know for a fact that they above all fruits are best for breeding. But you can never go wrong by using other fruits and vegetables and I am sure even if you never use oranges you will still have a great production of nymphs due to the extra hydration that they require.

Now separating the young from the breeders is also proven to be more effective i myself have seen the difference. When you have a smaller colony anywhere from under 100 to 1000 it really doesn't make a difference but when you produce them by the tens of thousands it makes a huge difference. (For efficient breeding) Now for your feeders you can cram many numbers into one bin and they would be fine until they start smothering each other which has happened to me, so i had to get a much larger bin.

This information may mean nothing to someone who is only breeding to support a few pets. However I am in the middle of preparing to breed a few species of toads and also add new frogs to my family. So i am looking to breed the dubia in the millions to be able to care for thousands of small toads until i can sell them off to 5 pet stores in the local area where i live. And I do sell roaches to pet stores on occasion when they give me excellent offers. I also like helping other frog owners out on this form and give them a few 100 with no charge. But most of all I like to give good advice to new breeders as well.

I believe everyone has good advice to give. I don't know everything about the dubia and I have never met anyone who does. But at the rate that I breed I do have a few tricks up my sleeve. I can also give you detail on exactly how overpriced roaches are to buy online and the products that they sell.

(this information only pertains to the Blaptica dubia although some species maybe very similar)