Veggies for feeders

[Sapphire]

So yesterday I got my first shipment of dubia, as well as a shipment of crickets in the mail. I put in the same food for both--Fluker's high-calcium gutload diet stuff, water crystals, and kale. This was the first time I tried kale with crickets. The crix devoured it, but the dubia completely ignored it. I thought this was kind of interesting. Does anyone else have any experiences with different vegetables and fruits with their feeders? What do yours seem to prefer and what do they ignore? My crickets seem to like mandarin oranges once in a while, and like I said, they completely devoured the kale... Five minutes after I put it in, it just looked like a mass of crickets with some green stuff occasionally visible in between, there were so many on it.

 

[Claudiusx]

Not too sure since i don't raise crickets but my dubias absolutely devour apples, oranges, squash, and they usually eat the left over collard greens I have.

-Brandon

 

[jeschardies]

Like Brandon, my roaches devour oranges, apples, carrots, and collard greens while not showing an interest in potatoes though. My crix like collard greens, potatoes and carrots. This is obviously with some chow and water crystals available 24/7.

 

[Sapphire]

Do you cook/microwave the carrots at all to soften them up?

 

[TheWolfmanTom]

Roaches will move towards anything with a sugar content 1st.
High calcium gut load will kill crickets if your trying to keep them longer than a few days. The extra calcium is good at a gut load for crickets your JUST about to feed (IE a day or so) However if your trying to keep them alive 2 weeks plus the calcium will prevent your crickets from being able to molt, thus killing them as they grow.

 

[Alon93]

As said above me roaches prefer sweet food however if there's no other alternative they will eat just about anything.

My superworms go berserk when I put a thawed mouse for them that my corn snake didn't want to eat.

Oh and my silkworms love mulberry leaves :lol:

 

[Claudiusx]

Supers go crazy over thawed pinkies? Interesting

-Brandon

 

[Sapphire]

High calcium gut load will kill crickets if your trying to keep them longer than a few days. The extra calcium is good at a gut load for crickets your JUST about to feed (IE a day or so) However if your trying to keep them alive 2 weeks plus the calcium will prevent your crickets from being able to molt, thus killing them as they grow.

I had a batch of 2,000 crickets that lasted me three weeks on nothing but Fluker's cricket quencher and high calcium cricket diet. They molted quite a bit, if the piles of crap and skins I had to clean out every few days was a good indicator...

 

[Claudiusx]

Then it wasn't very "high calcium" because i've had a batch of 1000 die from feeding them too high of calcium just like he said.

-Brandon

 

[Sapphire]

Strange. Well mine have been eating lots of kale over the past couple days, lol...

 

[romanfj]

In my experience, Dubia love:
Oranges, tangerines, grapefruit, pineapple, peaches, acorn squash, butternut squash, carrots.
High protein cat/dog food

Mine leave potatoes to rot, won't touch limes or lemons, an leave any leafy green to go bad.

I have other roach species that love potatoes, limes and lemons.

Basically, tropical fruit and high protein animal feed.

Frank

 

[Sapphire]

I'm starting to worry that my dubia aren't eating... I've had them since Thursday and, with the exception of Thursday night, I've never seen them eating. I checked on them the past two nights after the lights were all out, and the most I've seen is one baby roach sitting on or near the food... There's supposed to be 125 of them in there. You'd think I'd see them eating more often... All they do is hide, hide, hide, and hide some more. And then they freak out like crazy if I move their hiding place.

 

[romanfj]

Hiding is what roaches do best.

Frank