Is it possible to have a SMALL dubia colony?

[Sapphire]

Hi everyone!

So, back in August/September, I sold off most of my nymphs. I had ~400 adult females remaining (I counted, by hand, up to 400... there were more, but I gave up after that).

They've been breeding since then. The babies that were born in September/October are adults now, so I have around, oh, WAY TOO MANY adult dubia. I'm going to be selling most of them off via the For Sale forum in a few weeks, and here's my question:

I have one beardie; he's two years old and he eats maybe 20-25 large dubia a week, at the most. How many dubia should I keep so that they continue to produce enough to keep him fed, but so that I'm not getting an excess of dubia?
Selling them is a cool way to make money and everything, but I can't handle having all these tubs full of roaches in my apartment for the rest of Vash's life.

Does anyone else have a tiny dubia colony? Is it possible to maintain a tiny dubia colony, that only produces enough to feed one dragon? :? Or will they always find a way to explode to numbers like the ~40k I have right now?

 

[SidCaeser]

I'm very interested in any replies, as well. I'm starting a colony, and I'm wondering if it is possible, or should my son and I take this on as an extra income. They could use some roaches at the local expo.

 

[Trajega]

getting a balance of breeding/feeding is going to be hard no matter what. I think you would need to have a little too few, and mix in other feeders when you see declining numbers. Another thing you can do is try balancing by feeding off females vs males. To tell the diff check the threat dubia sack pics threat (massive read count at the top of this forum). After looking myself, it seems the females have their last 2 segments fused together... Probably incorrect biologically, but visually it works.

 

[Sapphire]

getting a balance of breeding/feeding is going to be hard no matter what. I think you would need to have a little too few, and mix in other feeders when you see declining numbers. Another thing you can do is try balancing by feeding off females vs males. To tell the diff check the threat dubia sack pics threat (massive read count at the top of this forum). After looking myself, it seems the females have their last 2 segments fused together... Probably incorrect biologically, but visually it works.

I hate feeding off females. I can tell them apart, and if I check and it's a female, she goes back in the tub and I find a male to feed off. I don't know why, but I can't stand to feed off females. It makes me feel like a bad person. Maybe I'm sexist. :lol:
But I guess if I'm trying to keep the numbers in control, I should get rid of females and males in relatively equal numbers.

The way I'm thinking of it, the baby roaches take 4-6 months to reach adulthood. So I should keep enough adults to produce a month's worth of food for Vash each month, and then also keep 4-6 months worth of small/med nymphs so they grow up as I'm feeding off the bigger ones. And then I should sell the rest. I don't know how well that will work though. Sounds difficult.

 

[Jess]

I have a small colony... It's just enough to feed Dudley and my two leopard geckos. I think I have a maybe two or three dozen females, and a dozen males or so? I haven't counted in a while. But I'm super creeped out by them, so I try not to keep too many!

The only issue I have is that the bigger nymphs get fed off kind of quickly, so Dudley has to eat smaller ones until more grow up. But it works well for me since Dud eats the big ones, Stanley eats the small/med ones, and Stella eats the small ones. If I end up with too many, I sell them off and make some extra money.

 

[sultan316]

Not to steal your thread or anything, but how exactly do you sell them off? I mean like how do you package it exactly? It seems like it would be difficult and the profit wouldn't be a good trade off with the hassle. Please correct me if I'm completely wrong!

I recently purchased a good amount of dubias, and I also only have 1 beardie.

 

[Jess]

I just sell them locally on Craigslist, because I don't know how/want to ship them. I had about 150-200 adults and sub-adults that I sold for $40 a couple months ago.

 

[Sapphire]

Not to steal your thread or anything, but how exactly do you sell them off? I mean like how do you package it exactly? It seems like it would be difficult and the profit wouldn't be a good trade off with the hassle. Please correct me if I'm completely wrong!

I recently purchased a good amount of dubias, and I also only have 1 beardie.

Sorry I didn't answer quickly.

I package them in a plastic gladware container with holes poked in the lid (they have a piece of egg crate to crawl on, and a potato chunk to keep them fed/hydrated), and then I put that in a USPS priority mail box and pack it with newspaper to keep the bugs from bouncing around. They usually make it to their destination in two days. It is a little bit of a hassle, but I personally think it's worth it.

I just sell them locally on Craigslist, because I don't know how/want to ship them. I had about 150-200 adults and sub-adults that I sold for $40 a couple months ago.

When you sell them on Craigslist, do you just have the people come to your house and pick them up or something? I thought of selling on craigslist to cut out the whole packaging/shipping fiasco, but I'm not sure how I feel about random people coming to my house all the time.

 

[Jess]

I met the person at a different location. I've had people come to my house to buy stuff too, but I take everything out the the garage and make sure someone else is home too so I don't die LOL. One of the Craigslist murders happened 10 minutes from where I live, right by the reptile shop I got Dudley from. :wink: But no one's tried to kill me yet.

 

[Paradon]

This is why I don't do Craiglist. Some people are just *****s and downright crooked. There is no use dealing with them. Saves me the trouble! [laugh] :wink:

 

[Cowabunga]

Sounds to me like you only need a few Dubia on hand and like mentioned before, focus on feeding off females to avoid breeding. Its blasphemous advice but that is the only way. Understand that a female will produce at least 20-40 nymphs each and you are going through roughly 100 a month so maintaining only a handful of females (roughly 5) will produce this easily but remember to hold back some from what you plan to sell since it takes a while for them to reach that size. Also remember that it will take roughly 3 months to reach the point where they are considered "large" during those 2 months your breeder female will have produced 60-120 nyphms (20-40 per month) that in theory will succeed the ones you feed off and those creating a steady supply.


A word of caution though is that nature is mysterious and you might want to have some spare breeders on hand just in case they randomly die on you.

 

[Sapphire]

Sounds to me like you only need a few Dubia on hand and like mentioned before, focus on feeding off females to avoid breeding. Its blasphemous advice but that is the only way. Understand that a female will produce at least 20-40 nymphs each and you are going through roughly 100 a month so maintaining only a handful of females (roughly 5) will produce this easily but remember to hold back some from what you plan to sell since it takes a while for them to reach that size. Also remember that it will take roughly 3 months to reach the point where they are considered "large" during those 2 months your breeder female will have produced 60-120 nyphms (20-40 per month) that in theory will succeed the ones you feed off and those creating a steady supply.


A word of caution though is that nature is mysterious and you might want to have some spare breeders on hand just in case they randomly die on you.

Maybe I should separate out some females and just keep extra females, apart from males, so they aren't breeding the whole time but if I need them to breed I can drop them in with my males/tiny colony. Maybe...

 

[SidCaeser]

A word of caution though is that nature is mysterious and you might want to have some spare breeders on hand just in case they randomly die on you.

Maybe I should separate out some females and just keep extra females, apart from males, so they aren't breeding the whole time but if I need them to breed I can drop them in with my males/tiny colony. Maybe...[/quote]

That's what I was thinking. Maybe if you keep an overflow bin for your extra females. Feed them off if necessary. Put them back if your numbers are low.

 

[Flynnthedragon]

im starting.. well started my dubia colony. send all the extras my way if you want! just kidding but yeah, keeping most of the females in a seperate bin away from the males seems like a good idea, you dont want to have the males all together though without some females though or they will prob kill each other, to much testosterone ya know :lol: IF you have a feeder bin that would be a good place to put the females so the dont get lonely ...
As for shipping. I bought my starter colony from a member on here and she sent then in a flat rate box, put the egg flats in there and then just put the roaches in there, no special container or anything, I would tape it much better as some got under the flaps and got stuck on the tape and smushed but not many, and a heat pack was thrown in because im on west coast and shes on the east. IT was kinda hard to unpack and get them all out but seems to be easy and they are all alive still but for the ones that died in the tape. Depending on how many you are sending one of those Zip-loc food containers with a egg carton cut to size and few small holes in the lid would work good too. would want to put paper around so it doesnt slide all over though.