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Maxing Out Your Dubia Colony
Dubia roaches (Blaptica dubia) make awesome feeder insects for just about every kind of “critter” pet. That includes your typical lizards (bearded dragons, geckos, tegus, and collared lizards). But it also means amphibians and tarantulas.
If you don’t have a colony of dubia roaches yet, here’s where to start. But if you just got a new pet, or you’re looking to sell your roaches to other reptile owners, the next step is to increase your colony’s yield.
Setting up a colony is pretty easy. Maxing out the yield is a little more tricky. Here are some tips to increase the population of your dubia colony and maintain it long-term.
Why Dubia Roaches?
First, let me start with the obligatory “dubia roaches are the best” advisory. Dubia roaches are one of the best feeder insects out there for a lot of reasons. For one thing, they have great nutritional value:
Protein: 22%
Fat: 7.7%
Ash: 1.7%
Water: 60%
Calcium to Phosphorus ratio: 2:3
These numbers are ideal for lots of reptiles, which need a high ratio of protein to fat. Their calcium content is good (not great), but you can always supplement that by dusting them.
Beyond that, dubia roaches are perfect housemates, as far as bugs go. They’re incredibly lazy and do very little moving around. While the males do have wings, people rarely see them fly. And they’re terrible at climbing too.
So they don’t stand much of a chance of escaping. And even if they did, they would run into other issues.
Dubia roaches are very sensitive to humidity and temperature. They die pretty easily at room temperature, meaning that even if one did make an escape in your house, it would die before it made it very far.
Setting up a dubia colony is easy. We have another in-depth guide on the basics. But to reiterate, your roaches will live in a small plastic storage container full of egg flats. You can feed them cheap breakfast cereal or oats, lettuce, and fruit.
Dubia Roach Biology
In order to understand how to make your roaches, well, make more roaches, you need to understand the species.
Dubia roaches are a subtropical species native to Argentina. They live in leaf litter of subtropical forests.
Because of this, they prefer higher temperatures, ranging from 80-95°F. Humidity above 40% is a must, as high as 60% is even better.
They consume moisture through their food, either a high water content vegetable like lettuce, or tropical fruits like banana and mango.
They also like darkness, and need places to hide. The best way to simulate this in their enclosure is with egg flats, which give them lots of places to get tucked away.
The female dubia roach will carry 20-35 young inside her body, which she gives live birth to. Reproduction happens every 48-64 days. Roaches live up to two years, during which time they will reproduce as often as they can.
Improving Your Dubia Roach Colony
In order to increase reproduction, you need to make sure the conditions in your colony are optimal. Temperature above 80°F is imperative. Higher is okay too, just don’t go over 90 or 95°F. Ideally, you want the humidity at 60%.
Heating pads work well to get the temperature just right. Because dubia need darkness, I would recommend against using a heat lamp. Experiment with placement. You may need more than one depending on the size of your enclosure. A cheap aquarium thermometer helps a ton to keep an eye on the temp.
Normally, the best way to keep a humid environment is to spray inside your colony once a day. You can add a cheap hygrometer to watch the humidity. If you’re in a dry climate, an aquarium humidifier might be a good idea to hit the ideal 60% humidity.
Air flow is also crucial. If you have a steady source of heat and humidity, consider aerating the container with large air holes to keep fresh air moving in. You can always cover them with mesh in case the colony gets tipped over.
Maintaining a Healthy Colony
Given the right conditions, the roaches will do their thing and reproduce like the bugs they are. The other thing to keep in mind is making sure they stay healthy.
Dubia roaches can eat just about anything, and they will. In general, you can keep them going on a steady diet of grains. Just about anything will work, from steel-cut oats to off-brand cheerios to stale bread. Cat food will even work.
But they prefer a diet with some tropical fruit. Giving them pieces of mango, apple, banana, and orange will keep them hydrated and healthy.
You also need to keep their colony clean. Frass (bug poop) is a perfect substrate for mold, and that’s a concern, especially with higher humidity in the enclosure.
To keep the colony clean, move your roaches to a separate container every couple weeks. Shake their egg flats off and clean out any frass or dead roaches. Throw out the egg flats as they start to degrade and replace them.
As a bonus, frass makes for really good plant fertilizer, and it will give your houseplants a nice boost.
Lastly, you need a good ratio of males to females. Dubia females spend most of their time incubating offspring, and males spend most of their time wandering around reproducing with the females.
So you want more females than males in your colony to maximize their population growth. There isn’t an exact ideal ratio, but shoot for three times more females than males.
Controlling the sex ratio of your population is easy– just pick out more males (the ones with wings) to feed to your pet. This is why we sell our roach colony starter kits with more females than males.
And that about does it! The main points are:
- Keep your roaches’ enclosure at (or above) 85°F and 60% humidity. You can monitor the temperature/humidity with an aquarium thermometer and hygrometer.
- Keep your roaches healthy. They need plenty of moisture, which they get from food (lettuce works great). Tropical fruit is also good.
- Keep your roach enclosure clean. Mold grows on frass, so be sure to clean it out regularly and maintain airflow.
- Keep your colony’s sex ratio at around 3:1 females to males by selecting more males to feed to your pets. This will increase population growth.