thinking about dubia roaches. how do i make their bin?

[triumphtt]

I would lower it

 

[JenATL]

How are the roaches doing? I don't know if you got all the info you needed or not, but I will go ahead and tell you what I do.
I have two bins. One for the adults and the babies that I want to grow up and one for the babies that are food. I get my egg cartons from Waffle House for free. I did get the roach food and the water crystals. They both last. I started out getting the baby roaches so I could get rid of the crickets right away. They were disgusting. I did get mixed later so I would have different age for breeding. In my adult bin I did put a screen on one side. I put their food and water crystals on that side. On the other side I put the egg cartons and the temp probe under the cartons to check the bottom heat. I have a heating pad under the side with the egg cartons. It is on a timer so it has a heating time and a cool down time. The bottom gets up to 115 degrees. I find the heat does make a difference in breading. They produce much faster. Oh, my heating pad is on carpet and I have never had a problem. I try to spay the sides of the bin down every other day. My roaches produce way more then I need! You don't need as many males as females. I'm not sure what to do with my males so I still have all of mine. LOL!
I don't keep heat on my baby bin. I just punched holes in the top of their bin. They do just fine. They also love snacks. I put fruit or vegetables in the bins for them as a treat. It's amazing how fast they can eat the apple slices and what not.

 

[allaboutfish]

mine are doing great. i feed off my males and i currently have atleast one pregnant female and plenty of babies. i do have a question though. im running through my males feeding about 6 a day (they're adults and i just feed him what he wants). i need to know how long the babies take to get to maturity so i dont run out of males.

 

[saleen89559]

Babies can take upwards of 6 months before being full sized.

 

[suzuki4life]

nope

 

[shootthebunnies]

Has anyone used these on their bins? Are they safe?
I pulled them off of 2 tanks that I had laying around.

Thanks
Willils

 

[Chirple]

i ordered 300 mixed, 1 adult male, 3 adult females, and 4 oz of water crystals. can i use a regular heat bulb to heat the container? i dont want to spend 30 dollars on a CHE for roaches.

When thinking about feeding out of a colony, think about that each adult female is going to produce ~30 fresh nymphs a month.

If you have three adult females, that's 90 new a month - and those will take 6 months to reach maturity.

Really depends on the mixed nymphs you have too, but I wouldn't expect to start feeding from it for 3-6 months and it would be sparingly until you really get established since pre-6-months you're just feeding off out of those 300 mixed as they grow up.

 

[allaboutfish]

how do you tell if the females are pregnant? i keep accidentally feeding pregnant ones. i only have 1 adult male left (from what i can see), but i have a whole bunch of nymphs and they are close to adults now.

 

[saleen89559]

Simple solution. don't feed any adult females to our dragons!

 

[allaboutfish]

Simple solution. don't feed any adult females to our dragons!

but i need to. dont have any males left, and he eats too many nymphs. i only have one dragon,

 

[Chirple]

Leave the colony alone and buy some specifically for feeding. Your colony will never get going if you feed off adult females, pregnant or not. D:

 

[allaboutfish]

im buying crickets tomorrow. i just have so many females and nymphs i thought itd be ok.