Quote Originally Posted by demon amphibians View Post
This is something that happenes to me as well on occasion. And it very well could be stress that caused this reaction. I have seen them abort almost fully developed eggs before. even some lived. You have to remember that with these guys patients is important. I mean i even get impatent with mine and i have thousands of babies every two weeks. My opinion on the matter is you should get more adults I am talking a few hundred more let them do there thing for 6 months to a year. Then consider selling and feeding them. I mean you seem like you enjoy culturing them as much as i do so why not? Your toads will love you for it and you can make tons of money. With 24 females you will not be seing much production. 600 is for sure some good numbers but now you are in that down time where you have to wait 2 months for your next batch. If you think about it, that is a long time. With a few hundred you will have berths almost every day. And to be honest keeping 10,000 roaches are no harder then keeping 50. they just eat more and breed faster.
So true on that I enjoy it. But I only have the one toad for now. Had another litter in there this morning, and in removing all the babies, I came up with about 40. So that's fine by me.
Took a larger female nymph out of baby bin and put her in breeding bin to grow. There are others in there with the same purpose, but unfortunately the largest one is a male. At this rate, without adding adult females, yeah it will be slow going.
I may have to sell off everybody, but hoping to get another good round of babies out of them 1st. That's why it was so cruddy to see a teeny tiny litter yesterday. Also why I'm not adding or putting any more money into this right now. Got kind of a lot going on, but I agree, that it wouldn't be much harder to take care of a larger colony.
As far as selling, what would be the reason for someone to ship them loose in a flat rate box, during the hottest months? If you don't include a moisture source, have a well ventilated cup, why would loose be better? They're roaches, they can squeeze in and out of anything, particularly the little ones, so I wouldn't trust a box to hold them unless you taped it up completely, which I feel would be about the same as a deli cup in a reasonably taped up box, sent Priority or expedited. Or will they die enroute to destination if it's particularly hot and they have no moisture source? I've been shipping them dry and advising everyone to give them carrots or whatever when they get there. Those are my babies, dangit. Anyway, it was just something I read and I'm curious as to why.