It may also increase internal colony stress. You can reduce competition between males by increasing the F:M ratio. Healthy, fertile adult females are key to productive Dubia roach breeding. All things equal, healthy females:. The health of your roaches can determine the success or failure of your Dubia breeding project. It affects how fast roaches multiply, and this determines how fast a breeding colony grows.
Reduced productivity means fewer feeders once the colony is mature and established. Poor health in adults may also affect the nutritional quality of the offspring they produce.
They may also be less nutritious feeders as nymphs. On the flip side, good health supports reproduction. Breeding is energy-intensive, and roaches that do well tend to have adequate nutritional reserves to draw on throughout the process. They eat a fair amount while carrying their young, but they eat even more between the time they give birth and become pregnant again.
As nymphs, roaches tend to store away nutrients they will need later as adults. This suggest that quality breeding stock is very important. By the time nymphs reach adulthood, the time for storing reserves has passed. We believe raising healthy roaches from the start is critical. We also believe it makes sense to pay particular attention to supporting the physical health of your breeding females.
There are several steps you can take to attain, support, and even improve female Dubia roach health. You can:. In reality, they are delicate and responsive to their environment. Their health is closely tied to what they eat and where they live, and like any other insect they have a capacity for health or disease.
Tropical cockroaches breed well in some circumstances, but poorly in others. To reproduce at their greatest potential, they need to live in conditions that support their health. Consider that Dubia roaches have advanced palates that allow them to distinguish protein from carbohydrates.
This is not a random trait. It exists because nutrition is important to their survival. They need these and other nutrients in different amounts at different life stages precisely because their environment does matter. Breeding Dubia roaches efficiently requires adequate dietary support. The health and nutritional status of females influences how often they mate and the survivability of their young.
This means they need not only enough food, but food with the nutrients their bodies need for maximum production. Adding to the difficulty of providing Dubia roaches with the foods they need for optimum health is that they need different nutrients at different life stages.
All things equal, a newborn nymph eats differently than a mid-stage nymph. Adult males eat differently than females, and adult females eat differently than other adult females depending on where they are in their reproductive cycle.
As it turns out, Dubia roaches self-select for dietary nutrients based on their needs. Simply supplying them with a range of healthy foods can meet and exceed their nutritional needs because they know what they need, and when.
As mentioned before, Dubia roaches are able to distinguish protein from carbohydrates, just as we can. They crave the foods their bodies need. For example, young nymphs show a strong preference for protein. When given a choice, they tend to choose higher protein foods because they need protein to fuel their rapidly growing bodies.
On the other hand, adult males at times prefer carbohydrates. They will eat fruits, vegetables, and grains when given a choice between these foods and others with higher protein and fat. Adult females are another matter. They prefer protein sometimes and carbohydrates other times.
We have addressed dietary protein in the Dubia roach diet along with the dietary self-selection issue. There are some good tips as well as words of caution. Provide a range of foods containing various amounts of protein, carbohydrates, and fat to all the roaches in your breeding colony. This means a mix of high protein and low protein foods. The same goes for carbohydrates. You want to give the roaches control over how much of each nutrient they eat.
You can find an in-depth explanation of how to do this and why in the linked article above. The main takeaway is that Dubia roaches have different nutritional needs at different times, and you can meet these needs by providing a varied diet of whole food ingredients.
We recommend our dry roach chow because it eliminates the guesswork. It has the right balance of nutrients determined by significant testing and lots of experience over time.
For a breeding colony, we suggest a diet that includes fresh fruits and vegetables. While your breeding project can succeed without them, we believe they are important. Our breeders are always more productive when they have access to fruits and vegetables. In all likelihood, yours will be too. Common wisdom suggests that oranges improve Dubia roach fertility and increase mating. We do give oranges to our breeders, but only because they like them a lot. Especially adult males.
However, they eat plenty of other fruits too. For breeding Dubia roaches at peak productivity, we recommend avoiding these products. These products are essentially gut-loads. The bottom-line answer is that these products are probably OK as occasional dietary supplementation in many Dubia roach breeding situations, but they introduce too many unknowns for peak breeding.
We recommend avoiding them when maximum productivity is the goal. If conditions are right, you should have new Dubia roach nymphs in a few months. Healthy females bear around 25 or 30 live nymphs per cycle. Dubia roaches are not particularly well-studied, so our best guess is that cycle length is between six and eight weeks.
We know that the average newly emerged adult female mates five days after she becomes an adult. We also know she bears young 70 days after becoming an adult. That means new adult females have a 70 day reproductive cycle. Our best guess is between 35 and 45 days. Whatever the case, you will have a steady stream of new Dubia roach nymphs within 70 days if you stock your breeding colony with newly emerged adult females. Pro tip: You can cut that time to zero by starting with currently breeding females.
There is no need to make any changes when you see the first baby nymphs. New Dubia roach colonies stress easily, and removing newborns probably adds to that stress.
Nymphs in a colony of breeders will neither increase nor decrease breeding. The only reason to remove them is to make room for new babies in an already overcrowded colony or to give newborns conditions that differ from the breeding colony. You should allow Dubia roaches in new, immature breeding colonies to carry out their business undisturbed.
Allow the colony to become established before making changes. Dubia nymphs and adult females stress easily and they are particularly sensitive to change.
Adult females become noticeably stressed by big changes to their environment, including the removal of nymphs. Try to maintain this range in your breeding bin. If necessary, you can house nymphs in their own enclosure away from adults. If the colony has a problem with overly aggressive males attacking small nymphs, the solution is reducing the number of males to ease breeding stress and not removing the nymphs. We base our nymph temperature recommendation solely on experience. We know that nymphs are more sensitive to temperature than adults, and that they tend to handle temperature extremes and other stresses poorly.
NOTE: Keep in mind that removing all the nymphs from a breeding colony is a massive disruption and should only be done when necessary. In time you will get a feel for what your roaches need and what disturbances they can tolerate without affecting growth and productivity. Start paying attention to these things now.
Removing nymphs often will have a negative impact. This is especially true the first time you do it. Females may even drop their immature ootheca in response to the stress. When this happens, females must start producing a new ootheca from scratch.
Always seek to minimize stress by limiting disruption. Nymphs need a variety of micro and macro-nutrients to facilitate growth and support health. At this early stage, they show a strong preference for protein. For fast growth, make sure they have access to lots of high quality protein from birth. Remember that too much protein is harmful to their health in the long-run, so make sure they have other food too.
As mentioned, Dubia roaches self-select nutrients based on their needs. Use this to your advantage. Give them a variety of nutrients and let them chose. NOTE: You can house breeding adults and nymphs of all sizes together. A separate bin is not necessary, though it can come in handy for sorting, cleaning, and maintaining an awareness of what is happening inside a colony.
Changes and problems that affect reproduction are much easier to spot and diagnose if nymphs are routinely removed from the breeding colony. Every four to six weeks is probably enough. Not too often though, as mentioned above. As an aside, nymphs and growing juveniles eat much more as a percentage of body weight than adults. Sometimes they prefer protein while other times they prefer carbohydrates from fruits and vegetables.
For example, whole fruits and vegetables and whole grains. However, it becomes an issue with foods so finely blended that choosing one nutrient over another is impossible.
Dubia roach nymphs are far more fragile than adults and older, larger nymphs. They can benefit from a little extra care, and there are things you can do to increase their chances of survival. You will notice that nymphs tend to congregate around food and water sources. This is probably because like most newborn animals they need to eat and drink often. If they can find a safe spot near or even inside their food or water bowl, they often set up camp there.
To support their needs, be sure they have constant access to food and water. If you have to feed or water them sporadically, make the time between feedings and watering as short as possible. They can probably handle more time without food than water, but it is best to cut food disruption as much as possible. We recommend resisting the urge to feed off newborn nymphs as long as you can. In most cases, a new breeding colony will not provide a sustainable supply of feeders until it becomes established.
This can take a while. This will not happen until the first batch of nymphs born in the new colony have grown and themselves become productive adults with offspring. You can get there with a batch of adult males and females.
Alternatively, you can do it instantly with a starter colony containing roaches of all sizes and stages of development. Understanding the Dubia roach growth rate can help you plan your project and your colony. Developing a sense of the Dubia roach reproductive timeline will help you decide how many nymphs you can feed off and still meet your population goals.
It can also help you decide how many roaches to start with if you want to feed some nymphs off before they mature. If you decide to start feeding off newborn roaches right away, or before they mature, be very careful to allow some of each size to reach maturity.
Soon after nymphs start arriving you will get a sense of how many roaches the colony can afford to lose to feeding without appreciably affecting its expansion. Not all nymphs survive, even in ideal conditions. Keep this in mind when deciding how many to feed off. As a general rule, you will end up with fewer roaches than you expect. You can maximize the number of nymphs that reach adulthood by paying attention to their needs and making adjustments as you go. Pay particular attention to minimizing stress and providing adequate nutrition.
Healthy Dubia roach breeding colonies need only occasional cleaning. Perhaps once every few months. The cleaning interval may end up being shorter in reality if problems develop.
Generally, waste will accumulate at the bottom of your bin. Though unsightly, it is important to allow it to stay unless it becomes wet, moldy, or foul, or if it gets too deep. This in itself can lead to moisture retention, which contributes to the first set of problems. By definition, frass is the mix of roach feces, discarded exoskeletons, remains of dead roaches, and discarded food particles that develops — in this case — inside a roach bin.
Frass is normal and healthy for roaches. It does not smell bad and Dubia roaches like the cover it provides. However, moisture will accumulate in frass when it becomes deep enough, and if that happens it may develop a bad smell. At this point the bin requires cleaning. Remove some frass before moisture accumulates to avoid the build-up of mold and bacteria.
The right mix is the amount of frass that poses the least amount of risk of problems for you or your roaches in light of the benefits it provides. As mentioned, and within reason, frass is good for roaches. However, it also has benefits particular to breeding Dubia roaches. Understanding these issues can help you foster roach health, raise productivity, and lower your chances of encountering problems. Among the first things newborn Dubia roaches do is eat is their ootheca.
Roach egg cases are high in fat and protein, and they are highly nutritious. The next thing they do is eat is frass. While gross by human standards, this serves several crucial functions. Food shortages are common in the wild, and these bacteria helps Dubia roaches survive by enhancing plant matter digestion. Second, frass provides nitrogen, which the roaches convert to protein.
Simply put, it helped the species survive and evolve. Newborns grow extremely fast, and they can survive at least initially even without food because they eat frass.
A spare bin comes in handy when cleaning a Dubia roach breeding colony. You can either set up the spare bin and transfer your roaches to it, or use it to store roaches while you clean out the original bin.
Foul odors are usually caused by problems like rotting food, mold, or a build-up of dead roaches. Investigate any unusual smells immediately. Always try to quickly identify the cause, fix it, and take steps to prevent its recurrence.
Cleaner crews are insects — commonly Dermestid beetles and lesser mealworms — that work to reduce bacterial and fungal growth in a roach bin by processing eating dead roach carcasses in the case of Dermestid beetles and undigested or spilled vegetable-based food particles in the case of lesser mealworms. Either of these two insects can be used alone, but they can also be used in combination. In fact, both of these two insect species together tends to be more effective than either one alone.
Cleaner crews are common in captive Dubia roach colonies. Their benefits far outweigh any annoyance their presence may present to the roaches. Choose whether to use cleaner crews based on your circumstances. Generally, cleaner crews are probably not necessary in small colonies where very few roaches die and little frass accumulates. However, they are a necessity in large colonies like ours.
Stacking style and enclosure humidity are the two main determinants of egg carton longevity. The proper way to stack them is vertically, face to face, and in this configuration, they can last months before degrading to the point of needing replacement.
When stacked horizontally, frass and moisture accumulate and roaches chew through them much more rapidly. Egg crates also absorb moisture, and the heat and humidity Dubia need for breeding weakens their structure.
The more moisture in the air, the faster they degrade. Stacking them vertically with enough space between for some air to circulate will maximize their longevity. In time, and if you stick with it, your Dubia roach breeding project will yield a renewable supply of feeders. Follow our advice and you may even end up with more than you need!
When this happens, consider sharing the bounty with friends or acquaintances who keep reptiles, amphibians, arachnids, or other insectivorous animals. One of the big, intractable problems in the herpetological trade is malnutrition. Bone, kidney, and other nutrition-related diseases are unfortunately very common among exotic animals. You will notice a really bad smell and a lot of dead roaches within two or three days after stress or high humidity in the bin.
The second and just about as important is to have what some people call cleaner beetles Tenebrio molitor. They are also known as meal worm beetles. Since the beetles eat the dead roaches it keeps the bin much cleaner and has less smell. Please do not get these confused with taxidermy beetles Dermestid beetles , we do not use this type of beetle because we have had a few problems in the past with them.
We also like to feed our fish with the meal worms. Now back to the first thing of keeping adequate air ventilation, you will notice after separating roaches that the adults are sweating do not immediately put them back into the bin. If you are past the to much humidity point and you have dead ones plus slow moving roaches take all them out and put the healthy roaches in a clean bin with clean dry egg flats.
The sick ones that have the fungus and are moving slow need to be ether quarantined or thrown out. All comments and or suggestions are welcome and I may send you a discount coupon for the suggestion! More at Wikipedia More at Wikipedia. Use wikipedia link here for in on Madagascar hissing cockroach. You must be logged in to post a comment. Toggle navigation Menu. Home » About Us » Dubia roach care and breeding. Organic when possible short list: Dry cat or dog food is the most common ground fine.
Fish flakes mix with dry food is the best. Cereals that are whole grains are the best add honey and they love it. And feeding is easier because i can just throw them in a feed bowl because they can't get out and it's easy to moniter how much he eats. I have also started a colony of my own so I won't keep having to buy roaches, he's still a juvenile little more than a foot to go and already eating mid-sized dubia's a DAY.
The colony is not big enough to feed from yet, but they did have their first set of babies last week. They seem to be doing well and growing. But can anyone tell me how to tell if the females are pregnant? Do they just look fatter than normal? And about how long inbetween clutches for each female? Zdravko Arachnopeon.
Joined Jan 22, Messages Hi, I also have question about my colony, that I have for about a month and a half. I still don't have babies, but it seems that the most of the females are pregnant. Yesterday evening I saw one of them I don't know what exactly she was doing, at the moment I thought she was gaving birght. But now there are no babies and the roach is still pregnant - she's still having this white thing in her ass.
Can someone tell me what exactly happened? I keep them warm, have a water dish, plenty of food I have patience, but now i'm worried is everything OK with the buddies. Joined Apr 7, Messages The only way they can get out of their tank is climing glass, that as far as I know is not possible. The night when this happened I fed and water them. Is there any chance that the female was stressed and that caused this sucking back the eggsac?
But whatever it happened, the eggsac was not on the place the female was. Is it possible that it was eaten? Are there cases when the babies were canibalized?
Thank you for your quick answers! I'll wait and see what will happen. I almost forgot, what's the size of the newborns? Yes, i'll let you know. Joined Jul 16, Messages NinjaPirate Arachnosquire Old Timer. Joined Dec 11, Messages
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