Thoughts on cool feeders

I was curious if anyone had any thoughts on breading feeders. I have ordered a couple of Heterometrus spp and am thinking about a 2nd set up for a desert species preferably into eating the same things.
I'm also wanting to look at breeding my own feeders and was curious if anyone has any thoughts on a potentially cool feeder to do this with. I was thinking crickets, but wondered if there was something potentially interesting to watch or look at rather than have a couple of tubs of crickets off in the corner.

Breeding your own feeders is an excellent idea. However, crickets are one of the worst to breed. They're smelly and die quickly while their young take quite a while to mature.
You should invest in B. dubia roaches, they are probably the most popular feeder people breed. They don't climb container sides and don't fly, nor do they make any noise! Not to mention they have much more nutrients than crickets.

I don't know your location, but this guy seems to be a good seller: http://www.theroachguy.com/
You should be able to find sellers pretty easily, as often times people will overflow in their population of roaches and sell them off.
Here's a reliable seller on another forum: http://www.arachnoboards.com/ab/showthread.php?t=187293

Here is a youtube vid on how to keep them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hW8O5FIJmIg

Just check out all the other youtube vids on B. dubia and you should very quickly have your own breeding colony

Wow, after watching those vids, I'm sold! Thanks for the suggestion and all the resources! I will definitely give this a shot.

I'm in Wisconsin so I don't think I should have any problems getting some shipped, wondering if I end up with too many if I can hand them over to some pet shops? Trading may be a possibility too though.

Thanks again this was priceless!

Anybody have any idea how long small/nymph Dubias take to mature? I'm looking at ordering some to start a colony after some research done last night (was already planning on breading cricks but am now hands down convinced otherwise). Was just curious if I should order some smalls or spring for a mixed lot?

Also curious if I say I had 5 or 6 scorps to feed, and wanted to start a colony and feed the lil' guys in the meantime, would 125 or so be good enough to do that or would I need to bump it up to at least 200 or so?

As always any insight is much appreciated!

well insects like that do breed very quickly, so i think going with 150 would be good...
most scorpions of average size should be good to go with one roach every feeding, so by the second or 3rd feeding, breeding should be well on its way to happening

check this forums post thay have a lot of good info

http://www.chameleonforums.com/breeding-dubia-roaches-8054/

Awesome, thank you Sir!

Glad to be of service! By the way, how many specimens do you have to feed? That can help us estimate the number to buy. Whatever the mixture of roaches, make sure to buy a few adult pairs so they can mate and reproduce while feeding off the young. Sometimes people just continue feeding their pets with other feeders and allow a few months for their feeder colonies to grow in size and stabilize before feeding them off.

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Sometimes people just continue feeding their pets with other feeders and allow a few months for their feeder colonies to grow in size and stabilize before feeding them off.

I was thinking about that, then thought I'd ask and if need be just order extra dubias to be able to start a colony and sustain up to 1/2 dozen scorps.

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By the way, how many specimens do you have to feed?

At the moment I do not have any, I have had a 20 gal high vivarium set up for about a week now while I look for (hopefully 2 female) Heterometrus Spinifers. (The pet shop dropped the ball on ordering them for me so now I am looking to try placing an order with Ken the Bug Guy). Originally I was going to wait for a while with my consideration of a desert species to utilize another 10 gal tank I have sitting around. I'm leaning towards ordering 3 Hoffmannius Spinigerus. I think if these ended up breading I would be able to handle the numbers with a medium sized species.

You can try tarantula Inc.

They have very competitive prices and priority shipping is free too!
Ah, with a 1/2 dozen of scorps to feed, you can easily sustain your colony. Scorps are slow feeders, so that's the good thing.

This is a somewhat old thread, but where did you buy your B. dubia roaches, again? I'd just like to know who you ordered from and how the transaction went so I can plan future orders too.

No worries, I got my Dubias from http://theroachguy.com/. I didn't have any problems ordering from him. Things came on time, interesting packaging as all the roaches were in the box, but then again they are roaches, just careful opening the initial box they come in as they can just fall out of there. I'd order from them again. Bottom line is my roaches are still alive and doing good! I ordered 125 nymphs with 1 adult pair, so the going is slow but all the nymphs are close to full grown now so once they mature I'm sure the colony will start booming. I would recommend getting at least a few adult pair, or a handful of females and a couple of males though so things pick up a little quicker. I have not been able to feed off of my colony yet as i want it to get a little bigger and more stable.

I'd also check out http://theroachranch.com/. I have not ordered from them personally but have heard a lot of good things about this guy. Worth checking out. Good luck and hope this helps.

Glad to hear your roaches are doing fine.
This is exactly the type of information I wanted and it definitely helped, so thanks

H. laoticus wrote:

Glad to hear your roaches are doing fine.
This is exactly the type of information I wanted and it definitely helped, so thanks

Glad to be of assistance

how long does it take till you can start feeding off them...im thinking we should really start breeding some feeders (as our scorp count has reached 12 already ) but have no idea where to start or what to use? Any advice on an easy feeder to start with would be much appreciated