Dubia Breeding/Feeding/Care Tips

[PoliticalKid]

So I'm adopting a new bearded dragon next weekend and he comes with a small roach colony. I've been resisting roaches for the longest time but I'm finally breaking down and I'm going to try my hand at breeding them. Anyone have any tips on breeding, feeding, or general care? I was particularly wondering how everyone supplies heat and what you feed your roaches. The one thing I'm baffled by though is how to separate the ones you want to feed from the ones you want to keep in the bin. And how many is too many to take? I know that your not supposed to cull out too many so you have new ones to breed. I've always kept a bin of crickets and then I had my cricket keeper where I kept the ones I was going to feed for the next couple days. I assume you can't use the cricket keeper to house the dubias. I really have no clue what I'm doing, I can use all the advice I can get. Thanks for the help everyone.

 

[midmichicer]

I made up a decent care sheet and posted it here:

http://www.cnsfeeders.com/care-sheets


Sorting the sizes you want to feed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xz_DOXK_GBY

 

[thelonelyzombie]

Ok, I totally hate touching the roaches so I don't really separate mine too much like the youtube vid showed. I keep the egg flats in their enclosure and i take one flat out and shake it into a large empty tote. Then I dump them from the tote to a small shoe box size plastic container/tote that I keep by the lizard tank for feeding out of. Then I grab the feeders with tongs. Sometimes I'll knock a bunch off into a bowl for her to chow down on. But My Dragon only eats about 8-10 every other day, so the tongs work pretty well.

When my colony gets too big I lower my price on my Amazon.com add for them. If I post them for about $20 for 100 mix they sell really fast. Then I use my same approach for the feeders and box them up for shipping. I don't make a ton of money this way, but I get a little bit, and my colony never gets too big. If I sell off enough that I feel more comfortable with the colony size, then I raise the amazon price.

As for what to feed them. I give the roaches in the small feeder box a diet that I bought from my exotic vet. It's the T-rex calcium cricket gut load and fluker's calcium cricket water. The colony gets a mix of chicken feed, tropical fish flakes, turtle food, and calcium powder. They also get miracle grow water crystals and treats from my kitchen (Right now 1/2 can of cat food).

For heat, I keep my roaches in the basement. Outside temps in my area are about 45 during the day and at night lows in the 30's. So I am running 3 small heat mats (2 zoo med brand and 1 pet smart great choice brand). During the summer I only needed 1 small zoo med heat mat, but over the fall and now winter I have had to add more heat. I ran the great choice mat on a timer and had it only on at night for a while, but now that the lows here are so low, I need to run all 3 all day and night. Depending on where I put the temp prob on my digital thermometer the temps are about 77 in the coldest spot and 108 in the hottest corner. I use a 10 gal glass aquarium with Styrofoam and plastic insulation.

2 small zoo med heat mats are stuck to the bottom and the great choice is between the glass and the Styrofoam along the back.

I hope this helped.