Food!!

[Sublime]

Don't forget to put oranges in the bin. It speeds up breeding., You don't need water if you give them oranges. You can feed them old fish food,cat food.

Yeah I'm getting oranges for them definitely, everyone I heard use them tells you it helps greatly with breeding. My bin got up to like 105-110F, so I got to go buy a rheostat tomorrow to bring it down to about 95F, dammit. Oh well, that's good that I'll have one for the winter time, etc. You have a colony right? How long did it take before you could pick out of yours? I want to get this process going quick.

[BG]

Mark, to tell you the truth, with the oranges and hot climate. I was ready in two weeks. I started out with 200 mix. Now i have 5000, and im feeding with no stress.

[BG]

I had an issue with dead roaches. They would rot and bring maggots. I did some research,and have no more problems. Theres this beetle that eat the dead roaches and now the bottom is clean.

[Sublime]

Mark, to tell you the truth, with the oranges and hot climate. I was ready in two weeks. I started out with 200 mix. Now i have 5000, and im feeding with no stress.

Yes! Two weeks is great! With the 200 mixed too, that's good. I thought you would probably need 200 'Adults' to get ready in at least a month, but mixed that's even better. 5000, that's a great colony. You going to try to sell some off? You're probably just going to be buried with the amount of roaches producing or get more bins to separate, unless you want to get more frogs . You could always sell them to me? Haha.

I had an issue with dead roaches. They would rot and bring maggots. I did some research,and have no more problems. Theres this beetle that eat the dead roaches and now the bottom is clean.

Oh yeah? How were they dying on you? Were they insufficiently molting and dying from humidity being too low, end of their life, or mold growth? That's awesome that you got a cleanup beetle, I never would of thought of that, but with a bit of research anythings possible. Every time I buy crickets from my local reptile shop they always have this little black beetle in the egg flats with the crickets they give me. I'm wondering if this is the same thing you're talking about. Clears up the mystery if it is.

[MonsterPyxie]

Yeah I'm getting oranges for them definitely, everyone I heard use them tells you it helps greatly with breeding. My bin got up to like 105-110F, so I got to go buy a rheostat tomorrow to bring it down to about 95F, dammit. Oh well, that's good that I'll have one for the winter time, etc. You have a colony right? How long did it take before you could pick out of yours? I want to get this process going quick.

Mark,

Heres an Idea im doing now with mine.

if the bottom of your bin is at 105-110, prop some egg crate standing up in the bin. then put a temperature probe at the top of the egg crate.

when I did this I found I was getting 100-105 at the bottom, but about 85-90 at the top. The roaches where all in the middle/bottom area of the egg crate, so they must love the heat!


Now that I am heating the entire room to 95 degrees, thats less of a option, as it seems the temperature in the entire bin is around 95. gotta do more testing.


BTW don't screw up like I did and keep there humidity too low. I got a outdoor temperature/humidity gauge at walmart for $2 that your supposed to hang on a wall (im not spending $10-$15 on a "reptile" gauge) and I check it a couple times a day now. when I first put it in there my humidity was 30%. now that im keeping it between 50-60% humidity, the roaches are going NUTS!!!! They are eating 3x's as much as they where, and I see new babies almost every day!

[Sublime]

Mark,

Heres an Idea im doing now with mine.

if the bottom of your bin is at 105-110, prop some egg crate standing up in the bin. then put a temperature probe at the top of the egg crate.

when I did this I found I was getting 100-105 at the bottom, but about 85-90 at the top. The roaches where all in the middle/bottom area of the egg crate, so they must love the heat!


Now that I am heating the entire room to 95 degrees, thats less of a option, as it seems the temperature in the entire bin is around 95. gotta do more testing.


BTW don't screw up like I did and keep there humidity too low. I got a outdoor temperature/humidity gauge at walmart for $2 that your supposed to hang on a wall (im not spending $10-$15 on a "reptile" gauge) and I check it a couple times a day now. when I first put it in there my humidity was 30%. now that im keeping it between 50-60% humidity, the roaches are going NUTS!!!! They are eating 3x's as much as they where, and I see new babies almost every day!

Yeah I'm going to prop them up vertically stacked so when they poop the frass falls to the floor, they can thermo-regulate by moving up or down as you mentioned, and the new babies eat the poop. Yeah that makes sense, I also want to have it hotter than usual because people seem to fail at getting them to breed fast enough and it's usually because of low heat, I'm going to make sure it's pretty hot in there haha (Around the same temps you were telling me). 30% for dubia roaches isn't that low, they like moderate humidity 20-60%. That's great that there going crazy now with the higher humidity, I'll definitely have to take your advice on that one. I'm going to have to buy one of those humidity gauges you got at Walmart the next time I go. My mom wont let me keep the dubias in the house (Unfortunately roaches are associated with the word dirty, crickets are worse yet people still seem to not mind them wtf?), which is a downside, but I'll keep them in the garage and hopefully the humidity stays up to par. I hope the dish full of water gel crystals raises the humidity in the bin by the hot air drawing moisture from them because I don't really have any other way to keep the humidity up in their bin once I keep them out in the garage. I bought a zoo-med rheostat to adjust the temperature on the zoo-med under tank heater in case it gets too hot. Shouldn't get any hotter than 105-110F like I was saying though.

That's cool you got your colony thriving though, you'll have to update me with some pics in a couple months of how they're doin'. I can't wait to get my colony going, I hate crickets so much... There's a local reptile shop I called up and they had dubias, 50 large count for $8.99 so I'm going to pick up all of them that they have and probably start out with a colony of 150-200 today . So stoked. Thanks for the advice!

[MonsterPyxie]

good to hear mark. Another thing I think is helping is I removed a lot of "hides" of theres. I had 4-5 paper towel rolls in there, plus a giant roll I got from a picture i got online. I removed all these forcing the roaches to bundle up more and hide on the egg crate.

doing this they are packed in pretty tight with each other now, and I think its helping the breeding. As in its just easier for the roaches to find each other? if that makes sense.

I also use a infrared temp gun, but mine was $65 and is meant for general use. not reptile specific. I originally bought it for my mustang to read temperatures of the headers, and tune the motor, but now I only seem to use it for my critters, haha, go figure.

95 degrees and 50-60% humidity is working well for me. Just keep a close eye on temps. On warm days the temp can climb up to 100 (I dont think these guys would mind 105-110 even) and on colder days we are getting now, I've seen as low as 87. So when your keeping them in your garage just keep a close eye on how the temps change due to the weather.

Also insulate them from the concrete floor. My temps kinda sucked at the bottom of the tub until I got them up off the floor. I have a old floor rug that is thick, folded in half, under my tub, which stops the heat being pulled out of the tub and dispersed into the ground.

If your using a heating pad, It will help it not to cycle on/off so much trying to keep the heat from being put into the floor rather then the tub. I wouldn't really feel alright using a rug, so try to prop them up on some wood blocks or something. Also a inch or so away from the cold wall will help too. (unless the wall gets sun in the afternoon, then the wall could radiate some heat for you to the tub.)


just rambling, trying to help people out

[Sublime]

Yeah, I've read that dubia roaches are social. They do best when crammed together, easier for them to breed. Yeah I'll have to do some testing for a few days to make sure the temps are staying put, on colder days, etc. I put them on a fold out table I bought from home depot up off the concrete floor. Yeah if I put something that could potentially catch on fire I would prop the bin up off the ground to let ventilation through. Thanks for all the tips man. Everything should work out pretty well.

I made the mistake of buying a larger zoo-med under tank heater that I stuck to the bottom of the bin. It pretty much takes up the whole area underneath (I can't take it off now)... Hopefully the roaches can cool off by moving up the egg flats because there's not a lot of other areas for them to cool off. I've read many guides that tell you to just have the heat on one side, where there egg flats are so they can cool off... It shouldn't be too big of a deal though because you have your overall heat 95 for them throughout and they're doing well.

[MonsterPyxie]

I think youll be fine as long as they have somewhere to get away from the heat. worse case you have to use the retrostat to bring the temps down.

[Sublime]

I think youll be fine as long as they have somewhere to get away from the heat. worse case you have to use the retrostat to bring the temps down.

I don't want to hi-jack this thread so maybe we should start a dubia thread discussion. I got my dubias today from a local reptile shop, $60 for 200 adults with a little over count because the guy said he wanted to hook me up since his boss made him do that. At first the guy said he was going to give me the 200 for $40 so I was pretty stoked on that deal, but he talked with his boss and the boss wasn't happy about that haha. Still a good price regardless though. Got home, dumped them all out (One female died unfortunately) and there's a few babies so I'm guessing some of the females are gravid.

I checked the temps at the bottom with my rheostat bumped all the way up, the heat on the bottom floor is like 100-105F and the egg flats in the middle are in the mid 80s or low 80s. I'm wondering how to heat is dispersing so fast, I have a fairly large size cut out ventilation on the top though so that's probably why.

They all seem to relatively be staying on the bottom where it's hottest. Got a few jar lids setup with some high protein chow I made, water gel crystals, and a orange cut in two. So I'm pretty much setup, from the looks of it I think the guy gave me a lot more females than males so that's awesome. You can be rough with these critters, I'm surprised. I didn't want to be, but some of them were hard to get out of the 4 bins he had them in to give to me.

I'm interested who their wholesale supplier is because I talked to him the day before about buying dubias and he was like give me a day and I'll have the 200 adults for you since they only had small-large size nymphs in there for $8.99 per 50. When I said I might come back for more dubia he was like yeah, we probably won't have those again though so I'm kind of bummed on the availability. Worst scenario I can just buy some more of his large nymphs that are ready to molt into adults.

Overall I'm very aroused.

[Sublime]

By the way I'm using a infrared thermometer gun I bought on Amazon for $16.19! It's marked down like 78%, it's normally $71.99. This one is just basic with all the main stuff you'll ever need. Plus it has like 100 5 star reviews on it so I knew it was a good deal reviewing all the comments people wrote about it. If you're interested in buying it check it out. It has a laser sight you can turn on for more precise readings, blue light that lights up the led screen, auto shut off/low batter indicator.

Amazon.com: HDE Temperature Gun Infrared Thermometer w/ Laser Sight: Home Improvement