Dubia Colony Thriving; Time to switch my Panthers To Roaches

[unseen65]

I have been growing my colony of Dubia for 4 or so months now and they are doing very well. Its hard to get an estimate but i know that there are thousand of them. I have been feeding them cat food and oranges and they seem to be growing great on that diet. I have three 4 month old Panther chameleons that have up to this point been eating crickets. I want to switch them over to Dubia but i wanted to find out if i should be gut loading my Dubia. What do you guys feed your Dubia? Would it be okay to switch my Panthers over completely to Dubia? Also what feeding cup setup does everyone use for Dubia?
Thanks.

 

[ISA my Veiled]

Okay my first flag on this, is the cat food. The protein in the cat food could very well be to much for your panthers to digest and kill them. Which obviously you do not want that. Other than that yes you can use them as your staple and it is a great idea. I currently have my dubia growing and it has been about a month. They are a terrific feeder because they store gutload in there bellies for 2-3 days. I would just stick to oranges though because they are healthier and help with molting. I would use this set up for your dubias for a cup.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_od47TlbXA

This is a great feeder cup and I use it as well. And also slowly introduce them, some of them may not like them. Do a mix of crickets and dubia.

 

[nightanole]

Mine still wont hand feed them. But after a few 50/50 cricket mixes, he will now eat 100% dubia from that cup feeder.

Next up is Mrs. tarantula. I tried to feed her one, and it just walked around and she petted it as it went for 5 min. Guess it was wiggly enough to be interested, but not wiggly enough to eat.

 

[JonRich]

dubias are my staple feeder for my Panthers and other reptiles i keep. (disclaimer: i also offer other feeders to provide verity).

Its ok that you are using the cat food to bulk up your colony. But i'd stop with the cat food and start feeding them a better diet for a few weeks b4 i start feeding them off.

Sandra on the forum has some really good gutloads. I usually feed scraps from what my family eats. I peel fruits and veggies thick and feed the scraps and peelings to my colony. I also use a combo of Dino Fuel, Bug Burger and Cricket Crack.

For some reason oranges are always in my house. So they get oranges most days.

 

[JonRich]

I have no problems holding dubias with my hands. I feed a few different ways for different Chams..

Some cup feed (i started this when they were younger , i also placed either crickets or superworms in with them to stir them up a bit).

i had feed most of my Chams

And some i "stick feed". I just place a dubia on a stick and as it climbs i put in infront my Chams and they almost always take it.

 

[PantherYemen]

cat- och dogfood and oranges I have been warned about. What goes into your live foods also goes into your lizards and they, from what I have learned, don't do well on what is in those gutloaders. Cat- and dogfood containes too much animal proteen and oranges too much of.. something else I can't recall right now.

 

[pigglett79]

I have found that my dubias will eat just about anything. I give them a wide variety of fruits and veggies along with a dry gut load and nuts.

 

[nightanole]

cat- och dogfood and oranges I have been warned about. What goes into your live foods also goes into your lizards and they, from what I have learned, don't do well on what is in those gutloaders. Cat- and dogfood containes too much animal proteen and oranges too much of.. something else I can't recall right now.

If you feed your dubia a high protein diet they will store the extra protein as uric acid like we store extra calories as fat. Too much uric acid in the cham diet causes gout.

Really crank up the protein intake and the dubia colony will collapse.