Hey guys, I was wondering how many Dubias I would need to buy so I can start a small colony, I only have one bearded dragon so I will not need a mass upkeep, I have read that it will take a while to get a colony started, to get breeders and feeders, but I do not mind waiting some time for the colony to kick in.
So in short I just need to know how many to buy to start a small colony for one beardie.
General rule is 3x what your dragons will eat per month. So for example, your dragon eats 1000 per month, you want to breed 3000 a month. Each female produces on average 20 babies a month so you would need 150 adult females. This allows you to feed, replace dying/dead adults and cover any random deaths from newborn to adult.
If you are planning on just doing the nymph thing, it takes about 4-6 months from newborn to adult and after that, you want to wait 1 full generation before heavily feeding out of the colony and it being fully self sustaining. And once your colony is going, there will be no stopping it.