Quantity of Dubias?

[jumpinjack]

Hey guys. I will be ordering my dubias next week to start my first colony and will be picking up my BD later next week as well. I believe I have everything ready but I just needto know what you guys think would be a good number to start a colony would be? I will buy crickets until my colony is established and producing good numbers of feeders. Thanks for any advice as to how many I should order online and maybe where from.

 

[healthybeardie]

From what I hear, it depends on how many hungry mouths your feeding. I was told for one hungry dragon to start with 100 adults. Yesterday I just got my starter dubias (100 adults with a 20% overcount) from www.theroachranch.com

All dubias were alive and now I wait!

Good luck

 

[jeschardies]

Ian supplied me with the same (100 large dubias) one and a half to a couple of months ago. I haven't had one fatality and I have just started noticing some small rugrats running around. I can't wait to rid myself of the crickets. I did get overanxious not too long ago and asked Ian (roach ranch) about adding to the 100 dubias and he was right, patience is the key. By the looks of it, I have many prego or already laid females. I guess now its just a waiting game for the babies to grow to about adult age......

 

[JeffSimpson]

Hey guys. I will be ordering my dubias next week to start my first colony and will be picking up my BD later next week as well. I believe I have everything ready but I just needto know what you guys think would be a good number to start a colony would be? I will buy crickets until my colony is established and producing good numbers of feeders. Thanks for any advice as to how many I should order online and maybe where from.

You will probably want to wait at least 4 months before you start feeding the BD the roaches. The more mature adults you start with, the faster the colony will grow, but adults are expensive so you will pay more. Most people will buy a few adult pairs, and then 100-200 large nymphs. It's a lot cheaper that starting with all adults, but soon you'll have all the adults you'll need.

In an ideal situation, adult females have ~25 babies every 30-35 days. Considering that a small BD could easily eat 30-35 babies a day, it's easy to see why it's better to wait.

 

[jeschardies]

That's correct, Ian mentioned waiting until my second generation of roaches are adults before I begin feeding out of the colony. I have since supplimented the colony from the roachguy.com with 125 mixed nymphs. I guess I figured that this should suppliment a second generation sooner than waiting until the babies are fully grown....I have a bit to wait still, but have started removing some adult males from the colony to reduce the stress in the bin.

 

[Burpy]

Hi, I'm in the UK and am going to start a dubia colony for my BD thats turing up in august.

I've been reading the threads and watching the youtube vids on how to set up and keep dubia (Cheers Ian from the roach ranch, very informative vids).

I was just wondering when I read some of the posts on this thread, whether genetics come into play. How many generations of baby dubias can you have before you have to chop and change the adult genetic gene pool to stop too much interbreeding going on? Is it even an issue :?:

 

[jeschardies]

I asked Ian (theroachranch.com) this very question....
He told me that it doesn't really play a part. Though, when I ordered a mix to boost my colony, I ordered from Jason (theroachguy.com) to provide a new gene pool in my colony.
I have babies and I am just waitin for the nymphs to get older before feeding from the colony...