Dubia Colony rebirth!

[LookinRound]

What size holes did you drill in the bottom of the 5 gallon bucket to separate the adults out from the rest?

 

[Cowabunga]

What size holes did you drill in the bottom of the 5 gallon bucket to separate the adults out from the rest?

I used a step bit and they were about 3/8" or so and with 3/8" you will get a few 1/2"ers that will wiggle through. Right now I want to keep anything bigger than that with my main colony to allow for them to assist in the future of the breeding attempt. When I do sell them they will be mixed most likely 1/4" and 3/8" anyways.

You can pretty much determine how far you want to separate them depending on what size holes you drill.

 

[Paradon]

Very cool idea! I like it very much. It's like a home made sieve.

 

[klm15975]

I don't know if its allowed, but upload the videos to youtube and link them here. I would be interested in watching them as I am about to order a starter colony myself. One question, why did you use the heat tape?
Thanks for the very informative post!
~K

 

[Cowabunga]

Very cool idea! I like it very much. It's like a home made sieve.

Lol, yeah.. :lol:

I don't know if its allowed, but upload the videos to youtube and link them here. I would be interested in watching them as I am about to order a starter colony myself. One question, why did you use the heat tape?
Thanks for the very informative post!
~K

Its allowed but unfortunately I uploaded the videos to Picasa and it will only let me embed them. Not giving me an option to save them and they are long gone off of my camera. I'll see what I can do...

As far as your starter colony you wont really have to worry about anything I had to do since a lot of this is clean up and rebuilding. If you are able to stay with it from the get go it should never really get this bad. On top of that your starter colony shold be no bigger than a 18-20gal tote and a few hundred roaches where as this is a paint in the but 50/60gal tote plus 2 20 gals and 4000+ adults with 10K+ nymphs lol...

I don't wish what I had to go through on anyone hahaha. :shock:

 

[LookinRound]

On top of that your starter colony shold be no bigger than a 18-20gal tote and a few hundred roaches where as this is a paint in the but 50/60gal tote plus 2 20 gals and 4000+ adults with 10K+ nymphs lol...

Why do you say no bigger then an 18-20 gal?

 

[Cowabunga]

On top of that your starter colony shold be no bigger than a 18-20gal tote and a few hundred roaches where as this is a paint in the but 50/60gal tote plus 2 20 gals and 4000+ adults with 10K+ nymphs lol...

Why do you say no bigger then an 18-20 gal?

You don't want an over sized bin in comparison to your colony. Its been found that it hinders growth due to the fact your roaches will find their own "territory" and sometimes stay in that area.

I see it in larger colonies as well. There are roaches I specifically tagged that I have NEVER seen on the other end of my bin. I've physically moved them over to one side and they will go right back to where ever their "spot" is. Keeping them more confined gives them no other option than to interact and the more active the males remain, enticing the females the more likely you are to have increased production.

Setting up your bins the way I do mine, it'll be a while before most need more than an 18-20gal.. I have 9 egg flats in there and that is more than I have seen most put into even larger totes. The amount of "real-estate" you can attain when properly setting your egg flats is quite impressive. Again, for reference, those smaller totes are both 18Gal Sterilites I believe. The larger the bin also the harder it is to control temps and keep your bugs at optimal temperature and humidity. Over sized bins are just a waste in every aspect. In the future I plan to separate my 50/60gal into either 2 breeder colonies of 25/30gal each or turn one half into a 35/40gal breeder and the other into a 15/20gal nymph area.

Both will allow me to take better advantage of the space.

 

[Paradon]

It's not that hard to heat a large bin... You can buy human heating pads at Walmart for really cheap. Plus I think they are comfortable at temperature you are comfortable. I don't use any heating and they still breed and eating heck of a lot. They gone through an entire head of green leaf lettuce yesterday. Minimum, you only need to heat up the tote to 75, 80 degree for them to eat and breed.

On a side note: I think the males travel around a lot looking for mate, but the females stay in one place. It's not a problem if you have plenty of space for them.

I don't know. I just do whatever. :lol: :wink:

Anyway, you're a genius for inventing a sieve for roaches.

 

[Cowabunga]

It's not that hard to heat a large bin... You can buy human heating pads at Walmart for really cheap. Plus I think they are comfortable at temperature you are comfortable. I don't use any heating and they still breed and eating heck of a lot. They gone through an entire head of green leaf lettuce yesterday. Minimum, you only need to heat up the tote to 75, 80 degree for them to eat and breed.

On a side note: I think the males travel around a lot looking for mate, but the females stay in one place. It's not a problem if you have plenty of space for them.

I don't know. I just do whatever. :lol: :wink:

Anyway, you're a genius for inventing a sieve for roaches.

I think a lot of others have done the separator thing. I am not sure since I haven't seen it but I hardly doubt its original. I guess in hind sight it can feel original but I was looking back on post and could have swore that someone said The RR uses something similar?

As far as heating a large tote, I assume you say that because you haven't ever had to heat a large tote? lol If you keep it small enough you wont even need heat pads if they are kept somewhere such as a hot room or a closet. Mind were in the main room but once they got moved into the garage then things changed. For maximum production one are of the bin needs to be at a constant 85-95 degrees (the higher the better) and 40-60% humidity for the nymphs, 30-50% for the adults. I agree that you don't have to goto those extremes because hell, we saw what this colony produced being kept in 50-70 degree temps all winter on its own. Stayin close to those numbers the colony is already crazy right now and its barely been a week. I opened it to find a bunch of babies crawlin around and I am sure my growth is being stunted because I only have about 15-20 old egg flats in there and they are PACKED. I need about 30 fresh ones and the people who have BS'd me about setting some aside are starting to bother me... At this point I might as well buy them on line.. I am seeing a few male adults turning up dead and I don't doubt they fight a lot being this crowded. I have a surplus of males but no point in letting money goto waste lol.

I think if you're casually breeding them just for your dragons, most of the crap I am doing is absolutely pointless. They are tough bugs and I am positive they can produce on much less thinking and just leavin em alone and doing their thing..

 

[Cowabunga]

Here is a couple pics of my breeder bin. Thing is WAY too big so we'll see what I'll do with it later...

I like 2 levels of tape because some times they will run on top of each other and end up higher than the first level-

The heating setup is heat wire wrapped and insulated. It keeps the bin at perfect temps over all so it's pretty simple... I'll eventually use it to line the bottom of a rock for the 2 smaller bins and I'll use heat tape for the big bin.

Pretty simple I suppose :lol:

 

[kym]

Beautiful set up you have! Quick question, what kind of heating wire do you use? Is that just the reptile type you can get at the pet store? And what type of insulation and tape do you use to make it safe to go on a plastic bin. I'm not quite ready to try breeding but do need to find a safe/inexpensive way to keep my crickets warm as I live in upstate new york and its darn cold here.
Thanks so much!

 

[LookinRound]

How do you plan on being able to easily sort the nymphs from the debri when cleaning out the tubs as time goes on?

 

[Cowabunga]

Beautiful set up you have! Quick question, what kind of heating wire do you use? Is that just the reptile type you can get at the pet store? And what type of insulation and tape do you use to make it safe to go on a plastic bin. I'm not quite ready to try breeding but do need to find a safe/inexpensive way to keep my crickets warm as I live in upstate new york and its darn cold here.
Thanks so much!

Thanks a bunch! As for the heat wire, its in fact the animal type but I forgot the brand. (The kind for the house have internal limiters on them that really mess with the overall efficiency of the setup as a whole. There are plenty of options though and next I will be trying a heat tape like flexwatt, cheap as hell and gets the job done... I am actually wondering about what I'll do durring the summer since it will get pretty hot but the breeder bin has a LOT of ventilation and I am sure I'll need to greatly increase the opening size on the smaller bins as well.

 

[Cowabunga]

How do you plan on being able to easily sort the nymphs from the debri when cleaning out the tubs as time goes on?

Within a months time, the frass isn't 1/10th as bad as what I had to deal with. I have that green shaker/strainer as well as a smaller bucket that I haven't posted up that has really tiny holes in it that takes a while to sift but I don't lose any babies.


Last time I had so much frass, it was unbelievable. Who knows how long it all was in there but it literally looked like it was moving with as many nymphs as were in it...

All the trash, shell, orange peels, clumps of frass, pumpkin seeds etc.. All in a 5gal-

Here is all the fras that was left.. Enough to almost fill up my 2Gal bucket.. here it is int he 5gal-

I actually put it all in one of my spare 18gal totes and put the frass on one end in kind of a slope and some old egg flats on the other. I put food on the flats and for a week I'd continuously stir the frass to allow the nymphs on the bottom to surface.

You wouldn't imagine how many I was able to pick out THE FIRST DAY I tried it...

Each day was similar but naturally less and less. I would say I pulled at least 2000 nymphs out of the frass alone. :shock:

 

[aussiefreak101]

I don't know where you've gone to ask for egg flats but I got mine from the local Denny's. If you have kids you can send them in, ask for the manager, and say they are doing a project and if egg flats could be saved. I went back every 3 days for a couple weeks. You end up tossing out about half of the flats cause of so much raw egg and other ickyness on them but I ended up getting a little over a hundred good ones.