As long as you don't clean them out too often, you'll be fine.
Most "home colonies" need to be given a good cleaning about
every 6 months or so in order to keep their odor down to a minimum.
Here's my cleaning routine:
1) get a temporary holding bin
2) shake all the egg crates out into the holding bin
3) pick through all the frass in the old bin to pick out any that are left behind
(I do this until I've got most of the free runners or until I get tired of doing it)
4) dump all the frass and stuff into a trash bag, tie it closed, and drop it into
the deep freezer for a day or so to ensure everything in it is dead. Then throw it away.
5) wash out the old bin and put in new clean egg crates
6) go through the holding bin and pick out/count the adult females, putting them into
the cleaned breeding bin.
7) go through the holding bin and pick out/count the adult males, putting enough to
support the females into the breeding bin and the rest into a "feed off" container.
8) dump all the remaining nymphs back into the breeding bin.
Done.
Takes me about an hour to do all that, but then I've got a nice clean bin and I know
exactly how well the colony is doing. I tend to do a clean-out every 4-6 months or
whenever the colony's odor becomes noticeable from more than a foot or so away.
And yes, 3-4 months is about right. Babies take about 6 months to grow to full adults,
so you can expect a rough double-in-size growth amount each month.
Also how long usually does it take a new born baby dubia roach to kind of reach thumb/ quater size 3-4months?
