Dubia colony advice

rajon1080

rajon1080

New Member
Soo i've decided after a brief time keeping adult crickets that they suck. They smell, they're loud, and they escape. I'm looking to start a Dubia colony but I need some advice on where and how many to buy. It seems they are expensive so I want to be sure I order the appropriate age/sexes to start a colony the first go at it.

Any help is appreciated as always!
 
On the forum I use for my tarantulas everyone raves about The Roach Guy and he has fantastic pricing. He will sell you a starter colony starting at 27 US dollars. This is something i'm looking to get started myself and i'm planning on ordering from him and making my own bin.
Alternatively if you want to spend quite a bit more money but have every single thing you need shipped to you jamiestarantulas.com sells a complete kit including roaches, food, and an already modified tupperware bin for a much higher price.
 
I just made my own roach bin. They are very easy. I have ordered roaches from several different places and have had good experiences with all of them. Check out DubiDeli.com, Dubiaroaches.com, or of course the site sponsor ABDragons.com. I have ordered from all of these and been happy with the roaches I received.

ABDragons also has the flexwatt heat tape. I use it with my dubia and it works awesome!

The number of adults you get depends on how many animals you are feeding. I would recommend about 20 females and 5 males per animal. Some may say this is more than you need, but I would rather have extra than too few. I am feeding 3 panther chameleons and I started with about 200 females and 60 males. Now I have several thousand mixed sizes and feed off 150-200 dubia every day. Unless you also order a bunch of smaller (feeder sized) dubia, do not feed from the colony for 3-4 months at least to let is get established. Alternately you can order a couple thousand small dubia as well and feed from them immediately, this is simply much more expensive.

I also plan on starting a 2nd colony soon because I have eggs incubating and want to be sure to have enough for the young ones when they hatch.

I think you will find that dubia are SOOOOOOOO MUCH BETTER than crickets in just about every way! Good luck!

Also I am more than happy to answer any questions you may have about keeping dubia.
 
the best thing to do is keep an eye out for someone selling their entire dubia colony. you shouldn't have to pay more than a couple hundred dollars. that's what i did and i ended up w/ everything i needed. the reason i say to do it this is bc if you buy let's say 1000 smalls, they won't last and your cham is probably too big for it anyways. if you were to buy all adults, it takes a long time for the females to birth the babies and the babies to grow.

BUT...before you go and buy a whole colony, make sure your cham will eat dubias. i had 2 huge colonies for all my chams but none of them really ate it as a staple. not enough movement from the dubias to attract the chams to them.

that's why i stick w/ crickets. i don't breed them bc it's not worth the hassle but they're easiest to gut load and feed. remember, if you clean the bin weekly (2x a week should be good) and you feed them right, you shouldn't have any die offs and smells. i also switched to the banded crickets and i love them. very hardy and A LOT less aggressive to the cham.
 
a friend of mine just picked up 200 mixed for 50$ and now thinking about getting another 3-400 mixed not sure at what price point. planning to start up a colony as well have some to feed off. sound like a good plan?
 
I got mine from ga crickets (not on their website I think but you can contact them) for $25. Complete kit, I've had mine since November and have tons of nymphs!
 
Depending on how many chams you have, most decent sized colonies will out produce what you can feed off. I find roaches to be much easier to deal with in every way com paired to crickets. I only ever get crickets if I end up with a new cham that has been fed on them and isn't used to roaches. The second my chams see a discoid, I have their attention lol
 
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