Quote Originally Posted by JMDaniels View Post
Well I hate roaches. I just cant stand the creepy crawliness. But you dont seem to mind, so then go with them. They cant jump like crickets so they are easier to manage in that sense. For me though, I'll stick with crickets. Also, crickets breed a lot faster than dubia, which could be good or bad.
Roaches are creepy crawly and trust me it took me a long time to get used to them. I really had a bad impression of roaches to begin with. I am not afraid of bugs that are creepy crawlies mind you. I will pick up a black widow bare handed as long as i have control over it i have no fear. But roaches were another story. But since about a year and a half ago i got used to handling captive roaches wild house roaches still drive me nuts.

crickets are far more inferior then roaches when it comes to breeding and feeding. Here are the reasons.
1 crickets will escape i don't care how you slice it whether they escape while feeding or they climb out of their housing, If you use crickets you will find them around your house and they can live in your house just fine as well/ Dubia roaches are slow and can't climb smooth sides. i have between 25,000-30,000 and i can count the escapes while feeding on one hand. absolutely none have gotten out of there bins, and even if they did escape, they can't survive long unless you keep your house humid and over 80 degrees. The only place they can live in the united states is Florida. And even then they will not invade your house.
2. 12 crickets will stink up an entire room/roaches have almost no smell. I do feed crickets to my toads just for variety reasons and 1 dozen crickets stink more then my entire roach colonies.
3. crickets do breed faster and mature faster that is true but a cricket can berth 100 eggs in a life time/ a dubia roach can berth 630-700+ in a life time.
4. Roaches are by far hardier then crickets B dubia females can live between 18-24 months. Crickets i give them 8 weeks at best depending on the breed.
5 dubia are larger but if you take a cricket and a dubia of the same size the dubia still has 12X the nutritional value of a cricket.
6. Like i said above b dubia are much larger then cricket so they are more appropriate for a frog such as a pixie. when i had to baby pixies i went through 1,000 crickets in 2 1/2 weeks (you pixie owners know what i am talking about). and they were just babies imagine how many a pixie of 8 inches in length can eat if it would even waste its time with them.
7. Crickets die off almost as fast as you can feed them. Dubia are a sterdy bug i have about 20 deaths at best a month and well you already know how many i have. when i first started my colony with 1,000 i had 1 death a month sometimes none.
8. crickets cannibalzie quite often/ B dubia are almost none existant if you have the proper moister levels.
9. And finaly most species of lizards and frogs prefer B dubia over crickets.

I can go on and on with this list all day long. I think many will agree that roaches in genreal are the Best feeder insects out there. Now nightcrawlers may be more nutritional i wont argue that but they breed very very slow and grow just as slow.