Just got my adult B. Dubia's for breediing

After ordering 100 nymph Dubia roach and realising it takes months for them to mature, then months again to breed I ordered some adults.

Now after seeing my nymphs looking like woodlice i wasnt expecting this.......



They are massive (and to think my girlfriend thought my nymphs would mature into crickets (lol) how am I gonna sneak these in!!!???

I had mine in a opaque plastic tub with air holes. Just hide it in the back of a closet.

Was thinking of lining the outside of the kritter keeper they are in with black vinyl so she can't see inside. Hiding it is a good idea but her finding them hidden will be even worse lol.

can I put the adults in with the nymphs? And is a medium sized Kritter Keeper big enough to start a colony?

Adults and babies are fine together. I put like 20 adults in with about 50 babies and forgot about them for a month (no food or anything), when I finally opened it, I had well over 1000. A KK won't last more than a week.

They need ventilation if you keep them outside try not to toast them in the sun.

When you say a KK wont last a week what do you mean? Its not tiny its about 18" long? and not flat like what i keep my p.imp in?

I'm in the uk so its too cold to keep them outdoors Abyss

I think he meant that it would be overpopulated quickly, but if yours is that large it should be fine.

As for the girlfriend, I think the best idea is always to get her an Avicularia tarantula and tell her it's wearing nail polish (hence the "pink toes"). Then tell her it needs the roaches to survive.

I still don't see why people can't get over the stigma of roaches = bad. If you control what they eat and what conditions they live in, then they're very clean and not the horrible plague-ridden pests people make them out to be.

see in england there aint a huuge stigma over roaches, i dont think we have any species that live here lol.
Im not sure but iv never seen them lol
so most people that come accross them do so because of there animals.
But i guess alot of people see them as being dirty because of television etc lol

There are definately roach in London dont know what they are called though. Turn on the light and they scatter!!

May have to get a bigger container, maybe something opaque, will i need to constantly leave a heat mat under it in the uk?

hmm it depends how warm your house is
but dubia's do like it a lil warmer so you might want one just to make them breed quickly

the roaches you see are normally german roaches or american roaches that have scuttled over here on ships and made like rabbits and populated the more overcrowded areas of england (and my school).

yeah i know there are german ones around, anyonre know if we have any species of our own

Ok.... Is my setup desparately too small??

well if ur breeding them they might over populate quickly
you could just buy a big bin fil it with egg cartons and then they will breed like mad and have loads room lol

Big ideas, small ammount of space to work with even finding a cupboard to hide that inis a challenge........?

That setup actually looks GREAT. From what I hear roaches are more likely to breed if they're a bit crowded.

If it does overpopulate, you can just feed off adult males to your larger critters or house them separately.

Side note: B. dubia males are known to suddenly become apt fliers when they hit a critical population density -- if and when that happens, you may want to grab a lid. I know a guy near Portland who can't feed his roaches off fast enough and actually had a male fly from the bug room into his living room once.

His girlfriend wasn't too pleased by this.

lol.


or you could grab a few and chuck them into the freezer.

Ok after keeping my roaches well fed over the last 5-6 months i've noticed the population has grown. So i have separated the nympths from the adults so i can keep tabs of them properly and not disturb the adults too much when picking for food. Also i can visually see the population growth.

Now after all the waiting when i feed them to my scorpions they just burrow and i find them weeks later...

Any suggestions?

I have had the same experience with roaches. They just burrow and dissapear, and you'll find them still alive when you clean the cage or something weeks later.
Didn't look like anyone ate them, so I gave up on that. I have heard somewhere that they might be doing some good in there because they clean the cage (take care of cricket leftovers and so on, kinda like janitors ). But I don't use roaches as food anymore. Crickets and superworms will do.

This is where tong-feeding actually becomes handy . . . although in my experience, a well-packed substrate makes them less likely to burrow, and the nymphs are more prone than the mid-to-large roaches.

Alternatively, you could headcrush them like you would a cricket.

On a side note, some species are worse about this than others. B. latteralis hardly burrow at all (although they're pretty dang fast runners), while the discoides roach colony we're taking care of seem to be the worst I've seen (I'll loose them the second I put them in a tank with substrate they could conceivably burrow into).