Wood with dubia?

[Longfellow777]

My egg grates are getting bad I've had my colony for about a year now. I was wondering can i put cork flats and rounds in the colony? If so do i worry about them eating the wood then me feeding them to Frey'ja? Would this be a good practice is it safe for the dragon and will it make my colony happy?

 

[Longfellow777]

@CooperDragon
I know you know quite a bit about the colonies, you got any advice on this topic friend. I’ve got 50 views and no comments LOL

 

[Longfellow777]

@CooperDragon
I know you know quite a bit about the colonies, you got any advice on this topic friend? I’ve got 50 views and no comments.

 

[seleghari]

I've never heard of anyone else doing this...but until someone else chimes in. Just Definitely stay away from cedar, fir and pine. Bamboo maybe?!? There's an idea....just talking out loud here.

 

[Longfellow777]

For sure oh yeah the no no woods. Ive read it on llreptiles care sheets and few other places can’t remember at the moment. I know it’s good for the roaches husbandry I just don’t know about the gut content because they eat it LOL. Thank you for your reply

 

[Longfellow777]

Well I just got an email from llreptile. I had reached out to them because they have the care sheets on wood with dubia. They assured me that as long as the roaches don’t go without food that they won’t ingest enough wood to harm my dragon. Also that it will help with stress and procreation. I’m gonna give it a go for awhile see what happens. At the moment I feed the colony a little bit of everything and then I have a little keeper that I gut load a small amount of roaches over two day period then those are the ones I feed to Frey’ja. So even if they do ingest some they will have it out of their systems by the time they are fed to her.

 

[seleghari]

Good information to have! Good point about the gut loadeds ones. I'd be interested to see what you find best to keep them separated. That's the next hurdle. It would certainly make harvesting roaches sooooo much easier than trying to pluck them out of the egg crate ridges.

 

[Longfellow777]

well I separate some two days before feeding anyway. What I do at the moment is I have my colony I feed them the salad scraps and fruit. But I take out 10-20 two days before I feed them to her and I gut load them with a few things this way I know the roaches I give her are topped up. So I’m not to comcerned with the wood being eaten a little because by the time they’ve been separated for the two days they will have got it out of their system. I use a little cricket keeper when I separate for the two days

 

[seleghari]

No, I meant keeping the wood separated so the roaches have room to move between them. The molding on egg crate kind of created hides already right....But if putting flat pieces of wood...they'll need some kind of separator to keep them from getting squashed between the peices as you move things. Get it?

 

[Longfellow777]

Oh yeah haha you do have a good point there. I had misunderstood. I’ll put new paper towel rolls propably.

 

[seleghari]

That could work! I might have to try this. My teenage boys easily keep me in egg cartons! But I hate trying to pluck them outta the crevices, cause my guy is still eating the little uns.

 

[Longfellow777]

Yeah it can be tough to round up them little ones. I saw this really awesome YouTube video how a man sifted through his colony. He had Lowe’s buckets and he put different Size holes with a drill he puts them all inside of each other then he dumps his tubs inside. With each bucket he pulls from within each other certain sizes fall through the holes so he ends up with buckets with each size Dubai pretty damn clever

 

[seleghari]

Brilliant man!!!

 

[CooperDragon]

I'd give it a shot. Cork should be harmless even if a bit is ingested (as you were advised by LLL). I typically use cardboard tubes, but that's mostly because they work and are disposable. You may be on to an improvement so please let us know how it goes!

 

[Longfellow777]

Sweet deal bud thankyou I will keep updates