I have a co-worker who breeds dubia roaches for his bearded dragon. He has of trees to sell me some young malted roaches to feed to my Pacman frog. I currently feed him nightcrawlers as a staple and supplement crickets when I'm out of nightcrawlers. My co-worker is selling the dubias for cheap. My question is whether I should continue buying the dubia roaches in small quantities from my co-worker or would it be more economical to buy multiple females and some males and breed my own young dubias to feed? I don't want to breed and end up having way more dubias than I can feed to my one Pacman.
I would say just keep buying them in small quantities because with roaches you can het in over your head quickly. What your feeding him is right on. You want a staple of nightcrawlers with dubias and crickets for supplementing.
Dubias is one if not the slowest breeding roach out there... they don't stink and are stupid easy to care for!!! Even with just a frog or two, it'd be easy for you to control your colony by feeding females if you have too many.
1 female will give birth to about 30 babies a month so it's nothing crazy.
Give it a try dubia is the best staple for frogs imo
Hmm this is tricky.. why don't you get a few pairs from him, breed it off while at the same time get the usual amount you buy from him to feed off. That way you won't be tempted to feed off your existing colony. You could always find someone to buy the excess roaches
I really think it's important to stress how slow of breeders they are. I started my colony with ~100 roaches, maybe 20 of them adults. It took at least 8 months or so before most of the second generation started reproducing. A year and a half later, they measure in thousands, but it certainly took a while to get here. They're also hungry little buggers. Out of curiosity, what is "cheap"?
For comparison's sake, I gave away all but ~30 red runners last September. They're currently well over a thousand strong despite me "accidentally" forgetting to feed them several times a week. Within a couple months they should surpass my dubia colony yet again. Being as that was the fourth time I got rid of almost all of them, you can see how they vastly outbreed dubias. A few dozen domestic crickets could potentially surpass my dubias in only two or three months.
tl;dr: You won't end up with more dubias than you unless that's what you're trying to do.
They breed slower than lats but I wouldn't consider them slow really. Try raising something from the genus Thera. Takes 1- 2 years for them to mature and ooths take 3-5 months to hatch.
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The price depends on the size. I buy small to medium dubias and he only charges $3 for 20. Most places in my region charge around $7 for 10 smalls and some small businesses charge .50 per small roach and $1 per large. My co-worker breeds them for his bearded dragons.
Those prices seem kind of high. Dubias last a lot longer than crickets so you can buy them in bulk cheaply from a website like discountdubias.com, and just feed them as needed.
This is good advice... do BOTH. Worst case scenario, you decide that you don't like rearing them and feed them off to your pacman (feed off the adult females first and the colony will stop growing right away!)
I agree- it took me some time to get my colony started. It's easy to regulate colony size by deciding who to feed off.
I sell my adult males locally for $.10 so I think you might find them cheaper. Adult females I generally get $1 each for, but even then, that's just my asking price... people who get bugs from me several times a year get an even better deal... If you have a warm location and if you generate "healthy" table scraps, you may as well start a colony and see how it goes.
Breeding Dubia Roaches is definitely worth your time. They will save you money and they don't jump, fly, bite, smell, or make noise. Here is a full breeding guide: http://werockscales.com/guides/breeding/dubia-roaches/
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