Dubia Cannibalism

[Marc10edora]

I went to clean my dubia tank the other day and noticed that a couple of males have been eaten by other males. I read in another post that you need to add protien to their diet or they will resort to Cannibalism. Right now I feed them collard greens, carrots and romane lettuce. I also throw in some flukers dry cricket feed. What kinds of cheap sources of protein can I throw in there so they will stop eating eachother?

 

[Cherron]

Egg yolk is an easily attainable source of protein. I use it with both my crickets and roaches.

 

[Marc10edora]

How do you feed the egg yok? Do you put it in a little dish or do you hard boil it?

 

[Brad Ramsey]

I stir it up in a bowl and microwave it for a minute.

-Brad

 

[ringfinger]

I feed mine a variety of fruits and veggies, but there is also a small bowl of ground up cat food always available. I use a coffee grinder to chop it up.

I always thought it was just the wings that were eaten if something was missing in the diet. It is possible that they just died and were then eaten, but I would add some protein anyway.

 

[Cherron]

I believe that a lot of what I have read said that if they are eating each others wings, then a lot of the time they are not getting enough moisture. I feed my roaches infant cereal, collard, mustard and dandelion greens, squash, egg yolk, sweet potato and alfalfa and make sure that they always have water crystals available. I have a colony of well over 1500 and have never noticed this problem except when I very first started my colony and was using wet paper towels for moisture. As soon as I switched to the water crystals, it stopped.

 

[Marc10edora]

Thanks for the advice. This is my first colony and I'm still working out the kinks. I'll add in some water crystals and more protein. I didn't have this problem until the weather started warming up.