How do you sort your dubias?

I am currently just buying the size I need but I've been thinking of starting a small colony. I have one growing beardie and a leopard gecko to feed so I was thinking breeding them would save me some money. One think I don't see in the info I've been reading is how anyone can sort through their colony for the size they need. It seems like it would take a long time to pluck out the right size one by one each feeding. Is there some trick to it?

Also can an adult bearded dragon even eat a full grown dubia? They seem huge.

Hi there,

Most people buy 5 gal buckets or other similar containers and drill different sized holes in each bucket to sort the babies from the smalls, the smalls from the mediums, the mediums from the large, and the large from the adults.

Of course if there is only a specific size you are after, you can just use 1 and drill holes in it the size you need. That way only the size you want and smaller will go through.

An adult can definitely eat an adult dubia. At least the males. I've never fed an adult female as they usually are a bit too precious of a commodity lol.

-Brandon

So to be clear. Every feeding you dump a bunch of roaches into the buckets so the correct size fall through the holes? I knew people did this for sorting to sell the roaches but I didn't realize it worked for regular feedings as well. Is that pretty quick? I would imagine the roaches might resist and you would have to wait for them to crawl through and fall on their own.

Oh no I wouldnt do that every feeding. You want to disturb your colony as little as possible.

I would drill the size hole you want, which will also allow smaller ones to fall through. Put them in their own tank separate from your breeding colony and feed off the ones that are the right size. The smaller ones will continue to grow and then you can feed those.

This way your breeding colony gets left alone and you have a container just for the ones you will feed off. But make sure to leave a mix of sizes in your breeding bins too to allow for future generations to continue on.

-Brandon

Ah ok thank makes more sense. So you have two bins, one for breeding and one for feeding and just sort them periodically.

Thank you!

Exactly!

You're welcome

-Brandon

Hiya,

What I do with my colonies (starting to breed on larger scale to sell off extras - dubias are living gold in my area) is add solely adults to my "new" colony, recording how many females and how many males I add (Usually 15-25 Females and 3-5 Males). I allow them to reproduce for 1-3 months (used to be 3, but since I'm upping production I now do 1) and them sort them by removing all the adults from the egg crates. The old egg crates, with all the young nymphs, get moved to the "small" sized colony and the old container with the adults get new egg crate. I also account for deceased adults, adding more male/females as necessary to keep an ideal sex ratio (which is anywhere between 2.5F:1M to 6F:1M; I aim for 4-5F:1M).

This system up keeps me about 5-15 minutes per adult colony once a month. Usually I can do the sizing maintenance for all my colonies in about half an hour, though I am being just a little quick and dirty since I can always double check my sizing as I'm feeding or packing for sale.

Hope that helps,
-Ellen