I want to breed staple feeders for everything from hatchlings to adults

B

bks2100

New Member
My girlfriend is up to 6 panther chameleons now, youngest 1 month old, oldest is 1.5 years. I've been trying to breed crickets for her and I'm successful most of the time, my biggest issue rotating egg containers at the right time but I also am still trying to find the best moisture level for the soil. But it's also just taking up a lot of space having cricket tubs for all the different sizes and a lot of time cleaning and dealing with smell.

So I'm sure the first thing you all will say is to breed dubia, but I'm in Florida so those are illegal. We have some discoids that I've severely neglected but still manage to survive. I plan on setting up a better tub for them and feeding and giving them water more often so they'll thrive and breed. So how old do panther chameleons need to be to eat the smaller nymphs? If they're too small for the hatchlings can I just feed the hatchlings wingless fruit flies until they are big enough to eat the nymphs?
 
Silkworms are a good choice. Discoids will be rather large, as adults, for a panther. Check out Florida legal roaches, as there are several vendors that have the option to narrow your search, with that as a criteria.
 
Not sure how old the panther needs to be to eat smaller roach nymphs, as it kind of depends on how big the panther is. They all grow at different rates. You could definitely feed the chameleon hatchlings some fruit flies until they grow a bit. Melanogaster fruit flies are most common and pretty easy to keep. The Hydei are a little bigger, but for them, it's easier to make the fly cultures crash. You could also hatch a mantis ooth and let those roam around for newly hatched chams. Nice itty bitty food item for baby chams.
 
I use bean beetles, fruit flies, pinhead crickets, and tiny silk worms for my hatchlings for the most part. I love bean beetles as they are an almost no fuss feeder. Put a container full of beans and some beetles, and within a few weeks there are thousands of them. Split the culture as many times as you need to have a rotation to feed off. High protein but difficult to gutload so they only make up about 30% of my hatchlings diet, but still great for variety.
 
Blang said:
I feed my babies hydei fruit fly's dusted & bean beetles! You could try raising banded crickets, lot hardier!
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I'll have to look into bean beetles more, I've never heard or thought of them. Fruit fly's I will totally do and they're cheap enough that we could just buy them once we need them (I'd probably buy a kit from an online site to make more cultures). Banded crickets I've only read about a little but it seemed like they were easier to raise but still had the smell and labor issues with breeding them. The roaches I like because no jumping, flying, crawling, and smelling. Not to mention I think it's easier to have 2-3 big tubs to hold breeders and a couple sizes where crickets I'm constantly cleaning, dealing with smell and if I forget to give them water for like a day a ton die off. Banded crickets would help with the last part but still smelly, dirty and require more time (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong).
Extensionofgreen said:
Silkworms are a good choice. Discoids will be rather large, as adults, for a panther. Check out Florida legal roaches, as there are several vendors that have the option to narrow your search, with that as a criteria.
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With silkworms it seems like I really need a mulberry plant to feed them leaves, or at least it would help a LOT. I'm fine with having some discoids that are too big, I know they grow slower than dubia but if they get too big then I look at it like I'll just have more breeders. I've looked at other roaches though and it seems like every other kind is harder to breed and is more of a pain to deal with (flying, climbing, etc).
trickedoutbiker said:
Not sure how old the panther needs to be to eat smaller roach nymphs, as it kind of depends on how big the panther is. They all grow at different rates. You could definitely feed the chameleon hatchlings some fruit flies until they grow a bit. Melanogaster fruit flies are most common and pretty easy to keep. The Hydei are a little bigger, but for them, it's easier to make the fly cultures crash. You could also hatch a mantis ooth and let those roam around for newly hatched chams. Nice itty bitty food item for baby chams.
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Well I was just looking for a guideline. Can some panthers eat the smallest nymphs right out of the egg or do they all generally need to grow out a bit before they can eat them?

I've looked into breeding some mantis but it seems like a lot of work and I'll be feeding them things that if I had on hand I'd be better off just feeding them to the chameleon lol. But maybe I'm looking at the wrong types of mantis, everything I've read sounds like you feed the nymph mantis pinheads and such.
oneillchameleons said:
I use bean beetles, fruit flies, pinhead crickets, and tiny silk worms for my hatchlings for the most part. I love bean beetles as they are an almost no fuss feeder. Put a container full of beans and some beetles, and within a few weeks there are thousands of them. Split the culture as many times as you need to have a rotation to feed off. High protein but difficult to gutload so they only make up about 30% of my hatchlings diet, but still great for variety.
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I'll really have to get some bean beetles and a few containers and keep them on hand, after a quick youtube video I can see how you guys say they're a no fuss feeder lol. I guess with everyone suggesting silk worms I'll have to look into it more. Thanks!
 
Step 1)Fruit fly ,pin head 2)bean beetle 1week old crickets,silkworm babies
3)Dubia nymphs and step 2) these are for baby cham
 
You are just being dramatic. I love drama. Drama is the juice that oils up life and makes it flow along,instead of congealing into a boring, monotonous paste. Slow your roll. Think smaller. Do just 1 container. Think 1000. Just go with that. In 4 weeks do that again. You will still need other sources of food in the "lean times", but the system is much more manageable. I'm in the 305 in FL myself. I have 2 containers Set outside. Make one egg box soaked for just 3 or 4 days per box. Make them 4 or 5 weeks apart. Twice a month. Less is more. A path leads to a small plastic container filled with 1/2 inch of water and then packed with common topsoil. It was simple and plain, and not many took this simple path.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
image.jpeg
 
So there is 2 things I hear about this. IDK however I am going to tell you what I keep reading. If you incubate your chams correctly and do not try to speed hatch them. They can eat dubia babies day 1, or 1/8 crickets. If you speed hatch and have your babies in 5-6 months than ya you are going to need very small feeders. I have read quite a bit from some experienced breeders that speed hatching is bad, let them take the full year to hatch.

Hopefully someone with experience in both can chime in with that.

Anyway, I have been reading about this a bunch.

So here is the list I decided on to feed my babies if and when I start breeding.
Fruitflies,
Confused Flower Beetles,
Silks+supers, (not sure about these, I hear there is issues if you house the babies together, my babies will each get there own cage so its no effect to me, but may be to you)
Bean Beetles,
Buffalo Beetles,
Baby Repti worms (up in the air about these ones),
Isopods (some of the small tropical ones)
And the finale the stunner :)

Kenyan Roaches, these little dudes only get to 3/8 inch full grow breed like crazy and are just like breeding dubia but way smaller, they also have soft shells all the benefits of roaches and the babys are smaller than Pinheads, the newborns are the size of FFs. These guys seem to be uncommon feeders for our hobby (in all herp keeping not just chams). I guess not enough people know about these little gems :). Ig uess its partly as they are a 1 feeder roach, they are the smallest feeder roach available. And while adults can reach 3/8s, from what I have read most of the time they do not get bigger than 1/4 or so. So they really are a baby only food, where as Lateralis breeds faster and can be fed to adult chams.

With all that I planned to buy maybe 1k pinheads to add some more variety and a mantis ooth, for each clutch. As the babies get biger I will mix in Dubias and GBRs.

Another option instead of keynans. Is B. Lateralis, these are the fastest breeding feeder roach (Or anything that I know of, they technically breed slower than Crix, however you can keep more of them in the same size enclosure than crickets so in turn it will seem faster) there is. The babies are same size as Pins, with the nutrition of a roach and no smell of a cricket.

WARNING: These guys will infest and breed in your house. No matter where you live, if you let some get out you will have an infestation. I even know people that swear they never let any out and still got infested, and they are very fast!

Some people will claim they wont, but I have been told from people I trust they 100% will and can even live through a snow. For this reason I decided to go with kenyans, which do not breed as fast and can climb but wont infest. Since Kenyans wont really be fed off except to babies you have plenty of time to get a huge colony going just for breeding year round. So you have been warned :) they will work but the consequences could be bad.

EDIT: Ahh dang, I missed the Florida part, kenyan roaches are not legal there. Nor are red runners.

Honestly you are stuck with crickets. Nothing will breed fast enough to replace crickets that is legal in your state. All the beetles breed fast, and if you had a diet of 40% supers and silks (10% supers 30% silkies), then you could likely pull off using beetles and flys the rest of the time.

However again someone needs to chime in with experience however I have read numerous times that feeding worms to babies that share a cage will end in nipped tails. Those were good breeders that said that, though I dont know as I have seen others say that has never happened to them.
 
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I would go with Green banana roaches, they can't breed outside of their enclosure even though they can fly, if any escape they die within 24 hours or less. Mulberry trees grow like weeds during warmer seasons. I have two. Isopods are especially good if you have cup feeders, I would suggest Giant Canyon Isopods, I just got a starter colony of these and fed some to my adult male panther and my small female jackson, both loved them. They are extremely active and you would have sizes even for babies when the isopods are young, there is no need to dust them they have large amounts of calcium in them anyway. Reptiworms are easy and hard to breed at the same time. The black soldier fly larvae is extremely easy to feed and take care of, however when they turn into flies getting their breeding conditions right can be a pain from what I understand.
 
Andee said:
The black soldier fly larvae is extremely easy to feed and take care of, however when they turn into flies getting their breeding conditions right can be a pain from what I understand.
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If you have time and access to some outdoor space I'd suggest black soldier flys (bsf) too. They take a little time like a month or more to get fully grown flys but they are super easy to get started and they are naturally higher in calcium than most feeders. Only thing is that you will need to cover your bin to keep the local lizards from raiding your bin. I use 1/4 hardware cloth from any hardware store. The holes are big enough for the adult flys to go in to lay in the compost but small enough to keep out the geckos and anoles.

Just get a watermelon or two eat what you want and toss the shell in the compost bsf bin along with safe fruit and veggies...like no tomatoes. The bsf will show up in there in two weeks or so. I wouldn't attempt to raise them inside although some people do it.
 
I knew someone would come along with the breeding conditions, I never knew quite what they were because I haven't researched it enough. I would most likely only do it when I started breeding. Could you seed your compost with Black Soldier Fly larvae?
 
You don't really need to in Florida. The female bsf will lay where there is rotting fruit. Seeding might speed up the process but isn't necessary.
 
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