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1. What do i order just large mixed or what?
It depends on how much you're willing to spend and how fast you want the colony to be sustainable.
Buying a large quantity of mixed nymphs is usually cheaper than buying breeding age adult females,
but you'll have to wait for them to grow up and start breeding.
For my colony, I started with 50 Adult Females, 10 Adult Males, and 200 Large Nymphs (so they were only a few weeks from adulthood).
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2. After I get them do I put them all in one container?
Yep. The easiest way to handle a smaller colony is to have 2 largish rubbermaid/sterilite bins (with lids). Use one bin for your
"breeder" bin and keep most of the colony in there. Use the other bin for your "feeder" bin and that's where you keep the ones you
are planning on feeding to your animals. Then you can transfer about a month's worth of feeders at a time from the breeder bin
to the feeder bin (once the colony is established of course). That way you're only bothering the females in the breeder bin about
once a month instead of constantly.
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3. How long does it really take to breed them without buying anymore feeders? I have a veiled chameleon thats 7 months old and my bearded thats little over 2 months
That depends on how many adult females you start with and how many feeders you need per month.
Each adult female will give birth (on average) to about 25 babies per month (it's actually about 30-40 babies per 40-50 days...but that averages to about 25 or so per month for ease of math).
So you take how ever many nymphs you need per month and divide by 25. That's the minimum quantity of breeding females you need,
and you actually want to go a bit higher than that so there are always extra babies that don't get fed off and are allowed to grow up to
be your next generation of breeders.
It takes about 5-6 months to go from baby to breeding adult, and usually about 2-3 months for baby to proper sized feeder (depending on
how big your feeders need to be). At a minimum you need to wait for the 1st generation to reach proper feeding size, after you
have enough adult females.
If you buy all the adult females you need, then you only need to wait that 2-3 months or so. If you have to have some nymphs
grow up to adult females, then that adds more time.
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4. Do you still dust them for feeding everyday still?
Yes, Dubia need to be gut-loaded and dusted just like crickets.
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5. Once they start breeding and laying eggs, Are they all safe in one housing?
Yes. In fact they prefer it that way. The only real issues you will have is that you need to keep your
female to male (adults) ratio at about 5 - 1. Too many males and they will start fighting each other
(plus they just eat up resources and don't help the colony). And you want to disturb the females as little
as possible. Too much stress can cause them to abort thier egg sacks (but that does take quite a bit of stress).
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6. How fast are they, And will they walk up screened cages?
Fast is relative. They aren't as fast or hard to catch as escaped crickets though. Most of the time, any
that get dropped or knocked out of the bin while I'm working just fall and stay there, sometimes they take off
though and they certainly seem a lot quicker when one of my dragons is chasing them
They can't climb very well and smooth plastic or glass will stop them.
The nymphs climb better than the adults, but a strip of smooth packing tape at the top of the bin
will pretty much prevent the few climbers that make it up the sides to begin with.
Screens, cardboard, textured plastic, the silicon seams of a cage, etc they can climb.
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7. How do I get the wife to ok it
I am not excited about them either
For myself, I pointed out how much cheaper a working colony is than buying feeders constantly.
Also, call them Dubia and not "roaches", that helps sometimes.
Point out that they:
Don't stink (let her smell your cricket keeper after a few days)
Don't climb or fly
Don't make noise (have her listen to a cricket keeper full of crickets after dark)
Don't bite or chew on your dragon
Are easy to catch if any do get away from you
Won't infest your house (they won't really breed at normal room temps and tend to just die after a day or two
if you haven't caught them)
My wife hated the idea, but she agreed to it (as long as I'm the one taking care of them). At first she didn't
even want to feed them to the dragons, but now she reaches in and grabs them for feeding purposes, but that's
more due to the way Mellow has grabbed her heartstrings than to accepting the buggies.
