Small scale dubia colony

[GeckoDaddy259]

Hi Everyone!

It isnt exact yet but I might've gotten permission to start a Small scale dubia colony and I was wondering if you guys had any tips for keeping it small scale and also how to raise dubias. Ive done my own research and have an understanding of what to do but it is always good to get an opinion from you guys as there are people on here Im sure have experience with this and can give me tips. Btw if i did start a dubia colony it would be in a 10gal aqarium as I emphasize the small scale.

Thanks in advance! George

 

[Elizabeth Freer]

Hi George ~

Here are some tips!

Blaptica dubia: Care & Breeding​

Breeding Blaptica dubia in a 10 gallon tank with 5 vertically positioned egg flats trimmed just a bit shorter than the height of the tank is simple. Alternating the egg flats back-to-back, then front-to-front, allows better hiding opportunities for your Blaptica dubia. Keep ground (or not) (Albers) All Purpose Poultry Feed, Purina Layena Sunfresh Crumbles, or Zoo Med's Natural Adult Bearded Dragon Food in a shallow lid to one side of the egg flats. Vitamin A acetate is one important ingredient in the dry diet. Collard greens can be added occasionally. Dandelion flowers and greens are also great sources of calcium. For moisture I dampen a clean medium-size sponge and spray the egg flats. In a room which ranges upwards from 67 F/19.5 C, I keep a 40 watt or 60 watt bulb in a 10 inch diameter reflector dome directly over the screened tank and on 24/7.

Dubia give birth to live nymphs when the temperatures are sufficiently warm. Females have this pointy body part called an ootheca. The babies emerge from the female's ootheca. The males "sprout" wings when they are mature. Mature dubia are way too big for most leopard geckos to eat.

Avoid cross contamination by not returning Blaptica dubia to the dubia tank if they are not eaten. They'll do fine in the leopard geckos' cages for a few days as long as they are contained within a feeding bowl. Place a little cricket food in their bowl.

***At least in the USA do NOT feed Blaptica dubia or other insects any type of dog, cat, puppy, or kitten food no matter how organic. I stay away from fish flakes as well. Excessive protein and/or fat intake can cause health problems for geckos. Doing that might have been the reason my adult male leopard gecko died from severe hepatic lipidosis.

Keep the dry diet DRY! Shield or remove the dry food when you spray the egg flats.

Tips

• "If you do not want to breed the roaches, keep them around 70 degrees F (21 C) to slow their growth. Eventually, if not fed off, they will grow larger than is safe for a gecko to eat. When you are ready to gut load them, heat them up between 80 and 95 F and they will eat like crazy! That's what I do with my feeders and it works well.
  
  My breeders are kept at about 90-95 F and they seem to grow 2-3 times as fast as the ones I have set aside for feeders." [Thanks to GU's Geckologist.tj in October 2013]
  
  
• "You can tell when Blaptica dubia are sexually mature simply by looking at them. When they molt past their final instar, they are sexually dimorphic- that is, the males and females have different physical characteristics. The females will develop a more noticeable orange color to their patterns, more obvious than with the nymphs, and will have tiny wing nubs. The males when mature will have full wings upon the final molt.
  
  The males develop their wings immediately during the final molt. Wing size, along with general body size, can sometimes vary, so when you say the males don't seem to have the wings like males should have, they may just be smaller wings than usual. If the wings cover the length of their backs, then they're adult males.
  
  I read that dubia aren't cannibalistic although it's difficult to say for sure unless someone were to test this. I know orange head roaches are cannibalistic and even readily eat live insects." [Thanks to GU's Mogey in May 2014]
  
  
• Click this excellent link: http://www.geckosunlimited.com/comm...ition/53949-feeder-roaches-care-breeding.html

 

[kholtme]

Avoid cross contamination by not returning Blaptica dubia to the dubia tank if they are not eaten. They'll do fine in the leopard geckos' cages for a few days as long as they are contained within a feeding bowl. Place a little cricket food in their bowl.

Elizabeth, What do you mean by cross contamination? Please explain to me further. Thanks

And if you arent breeding, but have a supply to feed off of, do you have to heat them up to make them eat if you have food in their container 24/7 at about 70 degrees?

 

[Tongue Flicker]

I literally have a small-scale dubia colony just for my leos.

The weather's gonna be warm enough in a few months (well, in your country anyways)..

i just keep mine in a small plastic bin roughly the size of a standard 5 US gallon tank with 2 clay pots inside (those used for orchids with holes at the side) turned upside down. On one corner a food dish (either dogfood/oat mix or a fish food/wheatbran mix), the other side a bottle cap filled with water and just beside it 2 slices of mandarin oranges (sweet citrus fruits does wonders for dubias where I'm at. Dunno in the US though)

I just keep the top open for full access to good air circulation/ventilation. (Again, not recommended if your humidity-temps drop below the standard "warm & humid" average)
Another way for providing good ventilation as well as preventing bad odor would be to place an inverted laptop cooler on top of their enclosure setting on a low or high enough not to cause a commotion inside

 

[Elizabeth Freer]

Elizabeth, What do you mean by cross contamination? Please explain to me further. Thanks

And if you arent breeding, but have a supply to feed off of, do you have to heat them up to make them eat if you have food in their container 24/7 at about 70 degrees?

Cross contamination: When you remove any feeder from a gecko's enclosure and return it to the holding tank/bin, there is always some chance of transferring bacteria, parasites, or whatever from the gecko's enclosure back to their holding bin. For instance, if one gecko has parasites and you "recycle" uneaten feeders back to the holding bin, all those crickets would become infected. Then when you feed those crickets, all your geckos would/could get the same parasites. Does that make sense?

Of course you feed the dubia 24/7 and spray them even when kept at about 70*F. I think that's enough. I don't heat up a small amount of dubia when I want to feed them off to my leo.

 

[Elizabeth Freer]

I literally have a small-scale dubia colony just for my leos.

The weather's gonna be warm enough in a few months (well, in your country anyways)..

i just keep mine in a small plastic bin roughly the size of a standard 5 US gallon tank with 2 clay pots inside (those used for orchids with holes at the side) turned upside down. On one corner a food dish (either dogfood/oat mix or a fish food/wheatbran mix), the other side a bottle cap filled with water and just beside it 2 slices of mandarin oranges (sweet citrus fruits does wonders for dubias where I'm at. Dunno in the US though)

I just keep the top open for full access to good air circulation/ventilation. (Again, not recommended if your humidity-temps drop below the standard "warm & humid" average)
Another way for providing good ventilation as well as preventing bad odor would be to place an inverted laptop cooler on top of their enclosure setting on a low or high enough not to cause a commotion inside

Neil ~

Have you ever experienced any problems with your leos by feeding your dubia those foods? I like to keep my dubia/insect foods within the normal ranges (protein, fat, etc) of a recommended leo diet.

Please note my red edit in post #2.

 

[Tongue Flicker]

Not really. Only one of my leos eat dubias. I'm not really worried with the dogfood and fish food here since I know for a fact they are made with cheap stuff (and by that meaning non-nutritious fillers i.e. corn, rice hulls). Most if not all, dog foods and fish foods in the US abide by the standard regulation thereby producing mostly high quality, high protein, high fat stuff unlike here haha! Don't worry about my feeders and leo, I've thought and researched about those stuff as well in the past

 

[hmarie186]

Cheap dog food here means animal by-products and digest which can be contaminated with icky things we wouldn't want possibly passed on to our geckos.

For a small scale colony, I agree with Neil about using something similar in size to a 5 gallon. Probably start out with 6 females and a male or two. It will take them awhile to get going but when they start producing you can just pull nymphs into a small grow out bin. Be sure to leave a few in there to replace your breeders when they die, otherwise your colony will crash and you will only have tiny babies to start all over with. I've had about 80% success rate sexing 1/2" nymphs by looking at body shape. Longer are males, rounder are females.

 

[kholtme]

Cross contamination: When you remove any feeder from a gecko's enclosure and return it to the holding tank/bin, there is always some chance of transferring bacteria, parasites, or whatever from the gecko's enclosure back to their holding bin. For instance, if one gecko has parasites and you "recycle" uneaten feeders back to the holding bin, all those crickets would become infected. Then when you feed those crickets, all your geckos would/could get the same parasites. Does that make sense?

Of course you feed the dubia 24/7 and spray them even when kept at about 70*F. I think that's enough. I don't heat up a small amount of dubia when I want to feed them off to my leo.

So with the cross contamination, it makes sense. But if I only have one gecko is cross contamination possible? Should I not put his uneaten crickets back with the other crickets?

 

[Elizabeth Freer]

So with the cross contamination, it makes sense. But if I only have one gecko is cross contamination possible? Should I not put his uneaten crickets back with the other crickets?

The uneaten crickets could have nibbled on gecko poop.

I would not put uneaten crickets back into the cricket container.

 

[hmarie186]

They'd probably be fine if they are confined to a bowl and don't come in contact with feces.

 

[kholtme]

Well I didnt know this. You learn something new everyday. Haha. Thanks for the info. For the past week what ive been doing is i drop in 2 or 3 crickets and watch as Gaz eats them. He usually eats 2 and isnt interested in a third one so i take it out in a matter of minutes. They could possibly step on poo, but I dont think any have ate any. I will only drop 2 every other day, and if he is still hungry ill drop a third. And if i have any extras ill just flush them down the toilet. Recycling crickets isnt worth getting Gaz sick.

 

[Elizabeth Freer]

Well I didnt know this. You learn something new everyday. Haha. Thanks for the info. For the past week what ive been doing is i drop in 2 or 3 crickets and watch as Gaz eats them. He usually eats 2 and isnt interested in a third one so i take it out in a matter of minutes. They could possibly step on poo, but I dont think any have ate any. I will only drop 2 every other day, and if he is still hungry ill drop a third. And if i have any extras ill just flush them down the toilet. Recycling crickets isnt worth getting Gaz sick.

Sounds good to me and best for Gaz. I just don't like to take that chance.

 

[Geckologist.tj]

Elizabeth, What do you mean by cross contamination? Please explain to me further. Thanks

And if you arent breeding, but have a supply to feed off of, do you have to heat them up to make them eat if you have food in their container 24/7 at about 70 degrees?

Hello there!

At 70 degrees, a dubia's metabolism is running on reserves and they won't eat or drink very much. Somewhere between 75 and 85 degrees, they turn into eating machines. For the health of your lizard, you want them to eat good, nutritious, foods that are high in moisture for 48 hours before feeding them off.

 

[kholtme]

Hello there!

At 70 degrees, a dubia's metabolism is running on reserves and they won't eat or drink very much. Somewhere between 75 and 85 degrees, they turn into eating machines. For the health of your lizard, you want them to eat good, nutritious, foods that are high in moisture for 48 hours before feeding them off.

Thanks! I bought some healthy dubias from hmarie186, I am using Purina Layena Sunfresh Crumbles for food and fresh collard greens for moisture. I also have a damp paper towel on top for moisture. They are sitting at 71 degrees. I am not breeding them, but just have a supply to feed them off. They have a constant supply of fresh food and collard greens.

 

[Geckologist.tj]

Collard greens are loaded with calcium, and thicker parts of the stem are a good water source so they make a good addition to any feeder diet, although, they do tend to stink. Hope all goes well for you.

FYI- Red eared sliders enjoy the occasional appropriately sized dubia too.

 

[Elizabeth Freer]

Thanks! I bought some healthy dubias from hmarie186, I am using Purina Layena Sunfresh Crumbles for food and fresh collard greens for moisture. I also have a damp paper towel on top for moisture. They are sitting at 71 degrees. I am not breeding them, but just have a supply to feed them off. They have a constant supply of fresh food and collard greens.

tj: I amended your tips on my Blaptica dubia: Care & Breeding care sheet with your post a few minutes ago. Hope that it reads correctly. ALL feedback much appreciated.

Here's today's amended version with all your tips included: http://www.geckosunlimited.com/comm...ckets-blaptica-dubia-hornworms-silkworms.html

I keep my dubia in a 10 gallon and at ~71ish F. Always have Albers All Purpose Poultry Feed for them to eat. For moisture I spray the vertical egg cartons in the 10 gallon.

BTW, how unusual is this: Recently I was away for several days. I set up the crickets with super moistened Eco Earth Coco Fiber (soil). I gave the dubia a lid of super moistened coco fiber as well. Looked in a couple hours later to discover the dubia had eaten nearly ALL of the cocofiber. So, instead, I added a super moist sponge for a couple days.

Though still at 70*F, were the dubia starving?

Kyle: What Geckologist.tj says, I think, is that we will do much better warming up a few dubia to 75-85*F when they turn into "eating machines". Then feed those warmed dubia all they can eat for 48 hours prior to feeding them off to our geckos.

 

[Geckologist.tj]

tj: I keep my dubia in a 10 gallon and at ~71ish F. Always have Albers All Purpose Poultry Feed for them to eat. For moisture I spray the vertical egg cartons in the 10 gallon.

BTW, how unusual is this: Recently I was away for several days. I set up the crickets with super moistened Eco Earth Coco Fiber (soil). I gave the dubia a lid of super moistened coco fiber as well. Looked in a couple hours later to discover the dubia had eaten nearly ALL of the cocofiber. So, instead, I added a super moist sponge for a couple days.

Though still at 70*F, were the dubia starving?

That is quite interesting. In the wild they eat a great deal of leaf litter. I guess the eco earth is similar. I wonder if there is something about it that triggers a feeding instinct? Or (just brain storming here) maybe the eco earth presents a food source that they can digest even at less than optimum temperatures. I doubt they were starving, but it's all speculation on my part.

 

[Elizabeth Freer]

That is quite interesting. In the wild they eat a great deal of leaf litter. I guess the eco earth is similar. I wonder if there is something about it that triggers a feeding instinct? Or (just brain storming here) maybe the eco earth presents a food source that they can digest even at less than optimum temperatures. I doubt they were starving, but it's all speculation on my part.

I was really surprised to find the dubia eating the coco fiber! :yikes:

I mean, the crickets just take in moisture from the super moistened coco fiber. Expected the dubia to react similarly. Another moisture source for several days could have been those clear gel "cubes".

 

[kholtme]

Kyle: What Geckologist.tj says, I think, is that we will do much better warming up a few dubia to 75-85*F when they turn into "eating machines". Then feed those warmed dubia all they can eat for 48 hours prior to feeding them off to our geckos.

You say your dubias ate eco earth? haha thats crazy. And they were at 70 degrees? So shouldnt my dubias be fine at 70 degrees if they have a 24/7 supply of purina and collard greens? keep in mind i dont want them to grow fast, because i am just using my supply to feed Gaz with and im not trying to breed them. I also dont want them to die, and i realize how important it is to feed your insects good food.

Or is it that you are saying that my dubias wont have enough nutrition because even though they are eating, they arent eating a ton?