Help with breeding roaches?

[JeffreH]

How many roached do you plan to feed daily? And how long are you willing to wait before feeding heavely out of the colony?

One of the biggest mistakes that keepers make is buying too few roaches to start a colony and/or not having the patience to allow them to become adequately established before feeding. A healthy number for most keepers is anywhere from 250-500 mixed sized nymphs, and even culture starts of this size can take some time to get going before heavy feeding should occur depending on how many you wish to feed and under the assumption that you are providing optimal care.

For me, I started with 500 mixed nymphs and I allowed them to breed for about 4-5months before even considering feeding any of them. The wait seemed painfully long, but I have had roaches from this colony going for ~6yrs and have never needed to replenish the stock for this species. Thats a darn good long-term investment. Now, I was/am feeding a pretty hefty quantity of insects daily to feed my collection, so these numbers aren't going to mean as much to you indivually, but just as a perspective. At the time of starting this colony (in addition to several other feeders) I was feeding roughly 100-150 insects each day.

To be safe, it is always better to have more roaches than not enough. Buy as many as you can afford, and hold off as long as you can to allow them to get breeding. If you feed prematurely, you set yourself back many months to allow them to recoup and may need to buy fresh stock. If you allow them to become established, you can have a surplus to feed and can even potentially make profit by selling excess (or you can just cull them if you have too many, your call).

Some quick numbers: Assume a single female will produce 20 babies a month, and you want to keep half back for future breeders. That is 10 nymphs available monthly as feeders per female. These guys can take an average of ~5months to reach adulthood from birth, and females can live an addition year or so after their adult molt. So if you are feeding 10 roaches daily, you will need at a very minimum 30 adult females reproducing along with a hefty load of mixed nymphs to be feeding from and to be held back as future breeders. These values are fairly relative, so again, play it on the safe side.

[DC101]

im only going to have 3 or 4 green tree frogs to feed so i won't need too much.

Im going out today to try and find some and ill buy a descent amount of mixed sizes/ages.
Ill let you know how it goes!