Heat for Dubai Roaches

I have two heat mats on my Dubai roach Rubbermaid container to get my adults to breed but it doesn't seem to be making the temperature go up at all. Am I doing anything wrong? Today I did notice that it did go up about 5 degrees but that has taken about a week!

The heat mats heat on contact so they're likely to heat the frass at the bottom of the bin rather than the air in the bin (which is fine). You'll want to get a temp reading in the frass if you want to have an idea about what the mat is doing.

CooperDragon":15ktq9a3 said:

The heat mats heat on contact so they're likely to heat the frass at the bottom of the bin rather than the air in the bin (which is fine). You'll want to get a temp reading in the frass if you want to have an idea about what the mat is doing.

Click to expand...

So even just heating the frass will help them breed? Will they still breed in the temperature it is now? (77)

Yeah. They'll burrow into the warm frass and seem to enjoy it. My basement is in the 60s a lot of the year and hits low 70s only in the summer and my colony has been fine for two years now.

From other learning I've had on this forum, you could also cover some of the holes in your bin until the colony grows some. Also works to raise your humidity. I ended up going with a Cozy foot warmer...working great for me so far. When I had it on the high setting it went to where it was set, and the thermostat turned off, but the Cozy foot warmer was still hot and raised the temps 1-2 degrees, then slowly cooled back down. Overall it was about a 15 minutes on, about 45 minutes off (off the top of my head). On the low setting it was about 27 minutes on, 47 minutes off (looking at my stopwatch from when I measured it a few hours ago.) The Cozy foot warmer was ~$24 on Amazon. If it ends up being too much, you always have a nice foot warmer for those cold winter nights. :0) I'm wishing I had an extra right now, my feet are freezing!

Hmm...three threads going at the same time regarding the same subject matter.
See the thread "Dubia Roaches", there are 46 postings with some helpful info.