Breeding Roaches

[Mordeth]

Thank you Urucone, I asume that I will get the poison feeder from a hardware store?

[Durban Keeper]

guys, how do you tell the sex with lobster roaches?

[Fooble]

http://www.progeckos.com/caresheets/lobster.htm

Male


Female

Sexing - This can be a little trickier than other roach species. Males are generally smaller and females are much wider and thicker. After quite a bit of time looking for differences in the adults I finally found one. Turn the roach over and look at the underbelly near the tip of the abdomen. Females have 2 small white dots with a small white line on each pointing to the center (median) of the abdomen. If a line was drawn down the middle of the roach these dots and lines would appear as a mirror image on each side. Males however lack these dots and lines. Generally lobsters don’t need sexed (unless to feed off males) as they produce so fast.

[gsouth]

I know this thread has been inactive for a very long time, but would anyone be able to give me an estimated minimum size of a dubia roach colony in order to sustainably be able to feed 1 Beardie?
My Beardie is currently still a little young for roaches I think, but I'm thinking of starting a roach colony as early as possible so by the time he can eat them, the colony is well established.

[Urucone]

Bigger the better, any roach colony can't really operate less than 50 roaches if you start with less you're going to throw in the towel before you even started, I started all my colony's with 100 in each container, as you feed you're reptile you cycle through the containers, week 1 you use tub 1 and so forth up to tub 4, week 5 you start with tub 1 again, this enable you're colonies to "rest".

[cascade]

As Urucone said, to have more than one colony going is a good idea, One thing that happens when feeding directly out of your breeding colony, is that you wipe the population out before you know it.
If you are starting a new colony the best thing you can do is leave it for atleast 2 years before you feed from it.

I normally have a breeding colony and then a feeding colony, the only time I touch my breeding colony is when I remove half of the nymphs, juvies, adults and some of the males out to the feeder colony.

This allows my breeding colony to keep breeding and growing by "half"
The feeding colony also grows as they also breed but they get feed out of.

You need to do some calculations, If you end up feeding your beardie 10 roaches at a sitting, every day for a week you would feed off 70 roaches in one week in one month you would of feed off 280 roaches.

One female gives birth to between 20 to 30 nymphs, a females gestation period is about a month so lets say you get 30 nymphs every month from one female.

So you would need 10 mature female to give you 300 nymphs in one month but the roaches take 4 to 6 months to mature depending on the size you are going to feed off.

So at the end of the day you would need to have almost 3 times the amount of new roaches getting born than what you are feeding out.
Because you need 280 roaches as food, you need 280 roaches for next months feeding and then you need 280 roaches to grow your colony and you need to have the growth rate staggered eventually.

If you don't manage it properly you will end up wiping out your colony by over feeding.
I have seen people with 5000 strong roach colony and they wipe out a whole colony in a couple of months on 2 beardies and a couple of tarantulas.

It not exact science with my calculations, they don't drop all together at the same time, it differs, but it is more or less the idea and what to expected.

[Rabid.Evo8691]

I got my colonies from petbugs.co.za
I got a hissing roach, Turkish roach, lobster roach and orange spotted roaches colony from them a few months back.

I am only waiting for my orange spotted roaches to breed, the rest have had nymphs already.

They also courier the same week and none of my roaches had escaped from their shipping containers or died.

They are well worth the attempt to breed and are so much cleaner than crickets or mealworms.

[scally]

Just on the aspect of water , wouldn't the gel balls that's used for spiders and scorpians work ?

[cascade]

A little off topic, not meant to use the water gel or gel balls for spiders and scorpions, it gets allot of bacteria on it, just pure water.

For roaches on the other hand it is fine.
But normally the roaches get their moisture from the fruit and veg you give them.
I normally mist the top of the egg crates and the sides of the container or I lay peat on one side of the container and soak the peat.

[gsouth]

Wow, thanx guys, this was really helpful.
@Cascade, those calculations are exactly what I needed!!!

Just a few more things, at what age do dubias start breeding?

Also, would you suggest dubias over the other roaches, (Turkish, Lobster, etc.), what I like about dubias is that they are the most protein rich, but also that they don't burrow, climb or fly. Only downside is that they seem to be slow breeders.

Would you possibly suggest rather getting one small colony of each (like Rabid.Evo), and let the quick breeders feed the beardie while the dubias establish their colony?

Thanx again, you guys are super helpful.

[scally]

wow I didn't know that thanks cascade -and this is a very useful post wow

[cascade]

Dubia's mature from 4 to 6 months.

The only downside to using Dubia's is that they can and do burrow. the males on the other hand are very active and will explore the cage where the females and the rest will find a spot to hide or burrow.

All roaches have about the same gestation and growth rate, the speed one colony grows at, is down to the amount of roaches you have the amount of food and if the environment is right.
To establish any colony you need time, months, years to get a big healthy colony going.
The only other issue with using other roaches is the climbing aspect of some of them, if the dragons don't eat them all, you will end up with roaches all over the house.
There is methods to get around this issue, first is using a plastic bowl or a dog bowl with sides and applying calcium powder around the lip of the bowl to keep the roaches from climbing out.

I went from 1800 dubia roaches to over 4500 in a couple of months, but I did not feed out of the colony, all I did was feed the colony.

[Inyanga]

My colony is so successfull I couldnt feed it out if I tried!

Its a converted 110lt Addis black bin and contains every live breeding roach species on the market, in no particular order; lobsters, pallids, hissers, red-heads and dubia with museum beetles and mealworms to keep the thing clean. The colony goes through a large bag of oranges every two weeks and about 300grams of dog food a month and I give away roaches for free to try and keep numbers down...

I really do prefer the mixed colony approach, no one species seems to dominate and I have every size roach available at any time for feeding to slings, adult T's, lizards, sugar gliders whatever!