Roach Colonies??

[jordy1380]

I have a dubia colony starting right now, but I only have about 100 of them mixed and three breeding pairs. How long do you think that it will take to get to feeding capacity? My guess is that it will be at least 6-8 months unless I buy some more. I am also getting some lobster roaches and was wondering how fast those bred. I have 100 of them coming and want to know how long it will take before that will get much larger. I have heard they are fast breeders, but didn't know for sure.

 

[citrusdragon]

I started my own Dubai kit with 175, 2 weeks ago. I would call Jason http://theroachguy.com/
and he'll gladly give the answers you seek.


Merry Christmas

Jeff

 

[gregorydragon]

I don't have lobster roaches, but have read that they breed like crazy (they also climb ).

For the Dubia, Jason (The Roach Guy) would be a great resource. You can email him from his site and he is glad to answer your questions. I'll share what I know. Dubia reach adulthood in 3-5 months. Each adult female will produce about 20 nymphs a month (I have read that they produce as many as 30) as long as your set-up is right. Cooler temperatures means less breeding. You want to shoot for 85-95 degrees with at least 40% humidity and a steady supply of roach chow, fruits, veggies, and water crystals. Oh! AND neglect. They need to be left alone if you want the "magic" to happen. :laughhard:

Let's do some Dubia math. First, you want to try to figure out when you can feed out of your colony. Since I don't know how many males and females you have, I will just say 50:50. Let's say you have 50 females. BTW, females are the key in this whole thing. Within 4 months, all of your current females will be adults. 50 females x 20 babies each = 1000 nymphs, right? Then keeping with the 50:50 ratio, that gives you 500 females. In 4 - 5 more months, that's...thousands. One thing I don't know is if there is a window of time that the new adults cannot breed yet.

Next, you need to figure out how many roaches you need per month to feed your beardie (mine eats 30-50). You should also use 15 as the number of nymphs per adult female. This leaves a few to replenish your colony, after all, you can't feed EVERY nymph or your colony will dwindle to nothing. Using my dragon as an example and using the higher number to be safe, mine eats 50 a day over 30 days which is 1500 a month. If each female produces 15 nymphs for me to feed, then I need 100 adult breeding females to "safely" use my colony to feed from.

I hope that made sense. This does not account for any random inexplicable die offs that may occur.

 

[TheDragonKeepers]

Help is at hand - I keep a whacking great old coolbox full of lobster roaches.

Yes, they do breed like crazy, about 25 or so a litter, livebirth. They need about three months to reach sexual maturity, and to get a good colony going you actually need two boxes to begin with - one for your animals to eat, one to start a colony. Stops you from dipping into the colony too soon. It's not really easy to sex the roaches, so the twobox technique helps. Don't worry if you see what looks like long yellow/orange poo hanging out - that's an egg cluster from a pregnant female just cooling off. Bit like beardie gaping.

Yes, they are climbers and they're pretty quick - winged adults can also flap quite a distance, but mostly downwards. Very simple to keep them under control - use a heavy layer of vaseline all around the top 2 inches of the box, and also around the wire of your heating mat. The warmer you keep them, the faster they grow. Under 10C, they die, but try not to get them over 110F. 95+ and you'll see the breeding go insane. They need a lot of fresh fruit and veg for water, rather than watersupplements, and cheap pond fish food sticks are great for bulking out the diet, as is cat or dog biscuits. I personally chuck all my kitchen ( Not meat or onion/garlic) food waste in the tub.

Hope that helps, any questions, just ask.

 

[patrickb]

gregorydragon's numbers are right on the money so to speak. The big question to your answer is how many do you need for feeding per a month? Figure that out and follow his numbers. 6-8 months from now your current mix should be matured and breeding (a few to quite a few should have hit this stage even before this), then it is just a matter of how long before the next generation starts hitting the size you need. The target feeder size is important too. If you only need 1/4" feeders you will get them a lot sooner thus cutting 3-5 months off the turn around on the second generation. I strongly believe in the magic number of 15 as a guideline for nymph production from breeding females. They produce more than this as noted above, but by using such a conservative number you are creatings a "roach savings account" and allowing for new breeders to come up and replace the old ones that die off.

As for the Lobsters, I don't breed em, but I do breed Turkestans which are only slightly slower than Lobsters. With 100 of them, you should be able to feed from them in 3-4 months roughly. Follow TheDragonKeepers advice and setup two seperate colonies, one to feed from and one just for breeding. The best way to do that is leave them together for a while, then when you think the production is good enough to feed from, take a few mature breeding roaches from the first colony and startup the second colony. Leave that second colony alone and if you miscalculated, you will have a very substantial backup going.