Crickets vs. Roaches

[Greg M]

I keep my Dubia in a large rubbermaid container and they can't climb up the side at all. They are actually fairly slow and clumsy. In addition, they do not breed at typical indoor (house) temperatures. Mine do not breed at all at 72F, although they live and molt just fine at that temp. In my experience, bumping the temperature into the 80's is necessary to get them breeding. Absolutely minimal infestation potential IMHO. Obviously, my experience/opinions apply specifically to Dubia.

The frogs and toads digest Dubia just fine. In addition, I would also point out that they can subsist on [at least some] cricket gut-loading mixes supplemented with some fresh fruit or vegetables. I use the Repashy gut-load for my Dubia (and as an aside, isopods like it too)..

[Greg M]

Had to dash so my last post was rushed, but my point was that you can raise the roaches on commercial products such as the Repashy Insect Gutload and not only do the roaches thrive and reproduce, but you get the benefit of gut-loading...

And as noted, isopods also really do well with the Repashy gut-load as their primary food...

[Bruce]

I have a small dubia flag colony for my female pyxie, and I think they're great! You can really control the population with heat and all I do is feed them fruit/vegetable scraps. Sometimes I gut-load but I usually dust with vitamins and calcium before I feed. I seems a bit pricy to buy gut-load to feed them, as mine will just devour anything I throw in there within a few hours or less!

[Greg M]

Bruce is quite right - Dubia can thrive on leftover veg/fruit quite nicely.

I just like to maintain them on Repashy gutload + sweet potatoes (or whatever) because I get the benefits of gutloading without having to think about it. The roaches like it and do well on it. My roach colony takes quite a while (months) to eat a small bag of gut-load, so its fairly economical. In contrast, crickets don't seem to maintain all that well on gut-loads, so you have to switch them to gut-load for 24 hours or whatever. I'm just too busy or lazy!