Bought some Dubias....

jadeaudio

jadeaudio

New Member
I just came back from a local reptile show. It was so lame nobody had a single Cham for sale. Everyone was selling snakes. Anyways, so instead of wasting the $5 admission I went for some feeders. I bought 500 crickets for $9, 50 silkworms for $10, 100 superworms for $5 and 30 mixed lot of Dubias for $10. Now these Dubias creep me the hell out. There was a few small ones, but out of the 30, 20 of them are full size adults and only 1 of my chams can eat them and it looked pretty challenging for him. I'm not real sure about these guys. They seem very difficult and hard to eat. Is it just because they are adults? And how many do I really need to start a colony?
 
So I've read, B. Dubia possesses a meat to chitin ratio greater than that of crickets even. They do get huge compared to crickets though, they're definitely not something smaller chameleons could make a living off of.

As it says here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaptica_dubia) these beetles are very prolific breeders who can give live birth to 20-40 nymphs a month.

I'd take a stab at 50+ being necessary to quickly start up an enormous colony of them, assuming the gender ratio isn't wildly imbalanced.
 
Make sure you are gut loading your Dubia roaches for 48-72 hrs. Do you mind telling us what size your silkworms were?

-Clemonde
 
Hey.
The Dubias creep me out as well. Ive kept my colony for almost one year now and I still cant get used to them. I started out with 15 adults, 3 males 12 females. They soon multiplied!!!!!!! I have so many of them now I dont know what to do with them all. I only feed juvenile sized to my chameleons never full sized ones.
 
mackdog said:
Hey.
The Dubias creep me out as well. Ive kept my colony for almost one year now and I still cant get used to them.
Click to expand...

I love the sound of a cockroach colony in a feeding frenzy. :D

mackdog said:
I started out with 15 adults, 3 males 12 females. They soon multiplied!!!!!!! I have so many of them now I dont know what to do with them all. I only feed juvenile sized to my chameleons never full sized ones.
Click to expand...

Let em' go free. :rolleyes:

Or get filthy rich off of sellin' em'. :p
 
They are not beetles and you generally don't feed off adults.
I think 100 is a reasonable number to start a colony with.
If kept warm enough they will produce a great number of nymphs which are small enough to feed month old veileds.
I have depended on my roach colony in feeder emergencies more times than I can remember, and of course have them incorporated into the regular feeding schedule here.
I count 2 large dubia nymphs (a couple of instars away from adult) as equal to 8 adult crickets.

-Brad
 
Chameleonboy said:
Make sure you are gut loading your Dubia roaches for 48-72 hrs. Do you mind telling us what size your silkworms were?

-Clemonde
Click to expand...

The silkworms were medium/large. A mixture of both. I could have gotten 100 small/medium for the same price. The feeders are definitely a good deal at the shows. I'm just tired of not seeing any chams around here. All anyone ever has if I do see any are veileds.
 
Well after doing some reading it looks like I am gonna try to breed them because these are pretty much all adults. I counted 24 adults and they are pretty even from male to female. Short wing vs long winged is the difference between male and female? I found a 10 gallon tank on Craigslist with a zoo med heat pad, screen top, and clamp lamp for $15, so it's worth the try. They are crazy eaters.... I wish my crickets ate like they do!
 
One more question though. How important is the humidity? I keep the humidity up for the chams from Misting. Otherwise the room is only about 30%. I have AC and in the winter it's worse. So will they no reproduce if the humidity sucks or can I mist the tank a little to bump it up?
 
a solid color tub is better than a clear tub they dont like light or the sight of movement and it intimidates them in their feeding, if you keep a small dish of really wet water crystals (not directly over the heat pad ) then that should provide all of the humidity you need , keeping the egg crates vertical seems to work better and be more sanitary, keeping the temps 88-92* will double the growth and reproduction rate, i agree ap is a much better source for dubia and remember what your feeders eat your chams eat , so once your colony is up and running disco the dog food that comes with the dubia and feed them the same healthy gutload you would feed your chams, theyre roaches they will eat just about anything
 
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