Dubia

[DesertDragon]

I am a new Dubia Colony owner, just got a 180 starter kit from The Roach Guy late last month (Thank You Jason). I also got a 150 mixed and 5 adult pairs from Arron Pauling (Thank You) a couple weeks later to get the Colony really going. I went with a 29 gallon Aquarium covered with foil, it is working great.

I have fed my little gal a couple roaches and it has been kind of a pain in the butt to get those couple smaller roaches. I open the lid and there are not very many out and the ones that are out run and hide in the roach motel. I'm not to sure if picking up the Roach Motel would be disturbing enough for the Queens for them to drop their eggs of not.

So my question to you Colony owners . . . How do you quickly "Harvest" the right sized roaches? are there any tricks?

 

[patrickb]

Checkout http://theroachguy.com/caresheet.htm and at the bottom of the page is a method for "bucket sorting" roaches to get the sizes you want. Just adjust the size of the holes you drill in the bucket to get the size of roach you need to feed.

What I do is about once a week, I sort like this and get as many feeders as I will need for that week (sometimes two weeks worth) and then I put the rest of the roaches back in the main colony. I keep those sorted feeders in a smaller rubbermaid setup the same way as the main colony. Come feeding time, just shake what you need off of the eggcartons, shake & bake. This keeps from having to disturb the main colony on a daily basis. It's also a good time to pick through and remove any dead bodies in the main colony when you finally start seeing them. You can easily go with two weeks worth of feeders if you want though, since the roaches won't grow that much over the course of two weeks and should still be about the right size.