Dubia starter colony source

[Scoutdad77]

Hi all,

I just purchased another 250 small dubia for my dragon, which seems to last him about 2 weeks. Problem is, he is getting bigger and eating more, so now it's not lasting as long. 45+ bucks every week and a half isn't gonna cut it.

So I have been looking for a decent starter colony source, and there are tons and tons of online sites that sell them, eBay included...

Can anyone recommend a good source of a starter colony? I just have the 1 dragon for now, really would like to be able to have a source of roaches without shipping every week.

 

[AndyHarp94]

I know Dubi Deli sells breeding starter packs that comes with adults and nymphs. It's not super cheap but I've always gotten my roaches off of their site and they've been super reliable.

 

[Taterbug]

I got mine for abdragons, they have listings on here in for sale, I ordered on eBay.

 

[Scoutdad77]

Thanks for the info guys, I will check them out!

I was reading somewhere that it was cheaper to buy nymphs, so I have 2 tubs that I plan on setting up for now and I'm thinking about just ordering some large nymphs and letting them molt into adults.

What kind of order size should I expect to place for some large nymphs in order to get 50-60 females and 15-20 males? 250? 500?

Btw, I can't feed off the large nymphs for awhile, so they would be untouched in terms of shrinkage amounts.

 

[Soulwind]

For using a nymph-only purchase, I'd get 250-300 nymphs.

That will end up with more than enough females and WAY more
than enough males. You can just cull out the extra males.

You might also look around on your local Craigslist and such, there
are often folks who'll sell a ready to go colony pretty cheaply.

Whenever I'm culling down my colony, I sell smaller colony sets
(50-60 females, 20-25 males, 200-300 nymphs of various sizes) very
cheaply (as in 50-60 bucks) and they usually go pretty fast. So it's
sometimes worth checking local listings.

The nymph-only route is pretty cheaply accomplished as well.

 

[Taterbug]

If you have patience the nymphs is the way to go. I don't remeber what my starting order was but I don't think I got many adults.

You can pretty reliably sex them as nymphs too once they are biger than babies, so you can focus on feeding the males off.