Breeding Dubia Roaches

Dylan Dutz

New Member
Well as the title states, how do you? I usually feed crickets but I've heard a lot of good things about dubia. Can someone please post a complete guide of how to breed them.
 
A complete post on rearing B. dubias eh?
Let's see if I have enough energy to finish this post.

Blaptica dubia (the orange spotted Guyana roach) is from South America and is most prolific when provided with a warm environment. These roaches will not survive well in your home outside of the habitat you create. They are forest floor dwellers and do not like being in houses.
The enclosure should be a large Sterilite tub with a lid. Ventilation is extremely important so some cut-outs on one or two sides and the lid, covered in screen, are recommended. This helps to prevent mold and keeps the environment from becoming too humid.
A warm side should be created by placing a heating pad (on low) under one half of the tub. This is the side that your roach furniture should be on (TP rolls, egg crates, etc.) The cool side is where food should be located. A dry food, like roach coach or cricketfood, should be provided as well as fresh "scraps" carrot and apple peelings, greens, squash, sweet potato, etc.
The tub can be kept in a closet (they like it dark) and they should be left alone (they like privacy). Substrate can be used. It makes cleaning a non-issue (you just don't) but it makes sorting out baby roaches very difficult as they will bury into it and disappear. No substrate is preferable to many...but more cleaning of the tub will be required.
Replace fresh food 2 or 3 times a week to prevent mold. Water gel or crystals are a good way to provide moisture.
These roaches are ovoviviporous. The ootheca is retracted back into the body of the female and incubated there for approximately 30 days. The babies hatch inside the female and exit giving the impression of live birth.
My roaches are most prolific during the summer when they live in the garage and temps are in the high 90's.
A good sized starter colony is 50 to 100 roaches.
I'm sure others will fill in the gaps I have left.

-Brad
 
roaches

I personally breed 5 diff. species of roaches. It's as easy as pie. Like said before just buy the roaches. Put them in a tub. Feed them lots of good food and they'll do the rest. They practically take care of themselves and the best part is they don't smell bad at all ( as long as you clean the old food out). The next thing you do is play the waiting game. I would recommend buying about 100 roaches (with alot of adult females. 1 male to every four females is best) to get a good booming colony going. You may never have to buy cham food again!
 
Simple...

Buy roach.
Put roach in tub.
Roach do dirty.
Roach babies!

Very very easy to breed them.

I should have written this. My propensity to go into detail and be rather verbose is why I sometimes don't respond to threads like this.
It's very taxing!:rolleyes:

-Brad:)
 
details

Nonsense, details make the world go 'round Brad! I happen to think your details are very helpful and are appreciated on this forum..:cool:
 
Thanks!
I was kind of kidding ... and wanting to give V. Chad a bit of a hard time.
It is why I am building the veiled info site though ... to save my poor little hunt and peck fingers!:rolleyes:

-Brad
 
Can the roaches completely replace crickets?

Everyone makes this sound so easy, but something about the sound of hundreds of roaches freaks me out! But, I'm also not completely comfortable with the crickets yet either. (Little bug phobia here!!)
 
Can the roaches completely replace crickets?
)

Sure.
Although I'm not totally sold on replacing any viable feeder. Variety is preferable and often necessary as chams tend to get "bored" with feeders.
They can definitely be considered a staple.
The key with any staple feeder is gut loading. As long as you care for the bugs as if they were the pets themselves and feed them the most nutritious diet you can, you will be providing your chameleon with the best nutrition possible in a captive situation.
In the end I believe gut-loading ranks higher than variety ... but both together is ideal!

-Brad
 
So I, like JBMNRC, am not fond of roaches but dislike crickets just the same. I would like to pick a bug to breed but silkies seem like a tedious job and crickets just smell. Would you recommend the roaches to a new bug fearing, bug breeder. LOL If that makes any sense... I guess I am just tired of buying crickets three times a week.
 
I would not only recommend trying your hand at breeding roaches...I would actually challenge you to do it!
You may surprise yourself and end up finding it a bit difficult to feed off your new little pets!

-Brad
 
I only pick up my hiss'n roaches becuase they are big and slow... The dubia I still use feeding tongs... Im a big wussy :D when is comes to them still.
 
New question on the same topic.

I recieved a good amount of dubie from someone ont he forums. I propbably have 7-10 adult females and a little less adult males and then 50+ smaller ones. How long should I wait until I can start heavily feeding off the colony? What's the turn around on a roach and how often do they give birth?

Thanks,

Kevin
 
roaches

I would give it about three months to let them reproduce some. By this most of the nymphs will be adults or at least close to adulthood. Then just feed off the males first for a while. Like i said it doesn't matter if you have 25% the number of males compared to females that's perfectly fine. Roaches, like all over animals, are territorial and will breed optimally in a situation that it doesn't feed it needs to stand it's ground and fend off other males that want to breed with it's females.... You want to wait until you have a significant amount of adults before you decide to feed some off...
 
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