i dont understand something...

[12many]

so i see many people use dubias as their bd's staple diet right? (besides some veggies ofc).

i have a dubia colony myself and there are plenty of them too. Their my guy's main diet but it seems that i cant just rely on them because it'll all go extinct, which leads me to other feeders.

No matter how big a colony gets, it'll get to the point were you'll have to use other feeders so the colony doesnt die off. Since it takes atleast four months for a baby dubia to reach adulthood, during those months a bd eats about 5-10 dubias a day...

say 5.. x 7 = 35/week

35 x 4 = 140/month

140 x 4 = 560

That's 560 dubias in 4 months!

There is just no way a "self-sustaining" colony can reproduce that fast and keep up with the death rates.

So how are you people doing it?


Its 2am and i cant sleep...AND i have work and school tomorrow...

 

[Gail]

Average birth number for female dubia is 30 a month and the average life span for a female dubia is 2 years. Each female will produce a lot of babies in its life. As long as you don't feed adult females off, you will never run out. Once a dragon is a adult, they only need max 10 adult/near adult dubia a week. You will end up with plenty of extra, so much extra you will be desperate to get rid the excess.

 

[12many]

that is an adult though.. whatabout during the times when it's still a baby/juve. I know you have to feed them close to everyday...

 

[midmichicer]

I've got a colony of roughly 100 females and 10-15 males. I take roughly 250 babies out a week and put them in their own separate bin. I have been doing this for months and have never had to feed anything else.

 

[randommonks]

Think of it as slow, exponential growth rather than linear growth. As Gail said, eventually you'll get to a point where it'll get ridiculously out of hand. Still waiting on that myself... :roll:

 

[Gail]

Thats why you need as many breeding adults as you get afford. If you only start with 40 females or so, you'll run out of feeders before too long. If you have 200 or more female, they can keep up with the demand.
It also helps if you can get your colony going before you get the dragon.

 

[Sherri]

Something else I have noticed...
As your dragon gets bigger/older he/she can handle larger dubia.
As that happens, even though they are still growing and require a ton of food, you can still feed less dubia per day.

Right now I give my dragon a choice...I put small and large dubia in his dish in the morning. (He is 5 months so still considered a juvie, but he can easily chomp on a 3/4-1" dubia without trouble at this age. He will most often go for the large nymph before the smaller ones.

1 of the medium to large nymphs can equal 5-6 (maybe more) of the smaller ones, so he often will eat one or 2 large and then go bask.....he will come back later for the smaller ones (he'll eat maybe 20 of them or so) and then later in the day he likes another medium-large nymph LOL.

He is gaining and growing and happy and I think I will come to a point where I will need to sell some of my colony, as Gail said :mrgreen:

As your colony grows, so does your beardie. When I started my colony I got separate orders of 1,000 small dubia for a couple of months while babies were hatching and growing.

I can't imagine ever feeding him differently! LOL I still get worms for variety, but when things are tight, it is so wonderful to not *have* to spend the money of feeders

Sherri