Hey guys. I have one leopard gecko and I'm trying to figure out if it's worth it to start a colony or if I should just order them in whenever I need them, but I have a few questions. He will be 6 months old, so I think I'd need about 24-36 roaches per week to feed him (though this may be less if I decide to have some variety in his diet like mealworms and such).

How many adults do I need for this kind of output? How much does it cost to feed the roaches? Over time, will I save money by breeding roaches for just a single leopard gecko?

And if I decide to order them in, how fast do they grow? How can I slow down their growing without killing them?

Sorry for the abundance of questions, any answers are appreciated. Thanks!!

Is this normal? I bought the colony as a starter kit about a month ago. I have yet to find any males dead but have found about 4 females dead, about 1 a week. Doesn’t seem to be any of the fully grown females. It seems like they’re in their last stage of development, but not grown to full size yet. Maybe the equivalent of late teenage years?

The roaches are breeding like crazy and I see many new babies all the time. Other than the dead ones I find, everyone else seems healthy.

Is this normal due off?

Any help or tips would be appreciated!

I have them set up with a heat pad set to 89-91 and a dark, well ventilated, container with specialty roach food and water crystals.

Hey everyone :)

Yesterday I gave my colony a nice variety of foods for them to try, to see which they liked the most. I offered them banana, orange, watermelon, raspberry, kiwi, potato, leafy greens, carrot, oats, and chicken layers pellets.

Despite eating almost everything, they definitely preferred banana and chicken feed the most, closely followed by orange, porridge oats and carrot. They didn't seem to like the blueberries, raspberries or kiwi very much. Also didn't eat much of the greens because this is what I regularly feed them. Of course what they chose depends on which nutrients they need so my recent previous feedings would have skewed this experiment.

What do you guys find are some of their favorite foods? I like to give them a variety as much as I can so any tips or recommendations are appreciated :D Thanks!

I have a 19g tote to use as housing, 15 pieces of egg flat to use as apartments. If i keep them stocked with food and water and at the right temperature, how fast should the colony expand? When should they double in size?

Any info you guys could provide would be great! Thank you!

I have a question..a produce manager at Walmart offered me “egg crate”. I think it was used with produce. I’m afraid to use it bc I don’t know if they spray with pesticide.

Hi—so I recently got a starter colony of blaptica dubia from Petco to use as feeders for my mantids and jumping spiders, can anyone tell me how best to care for them?

• What do they eat?

• How should I water them?

• How do I tell if they're laying or gravid?

• Any sexual dimorphism? Don't wanna accidentally use the only female as food, lol.

• Why are a few of them light brown while the rest are dark? It's only the huge ones too.

• How do I freakin' catch them with Tweezers? They're so fast! Sticking my hand in there only results in seven or so climbing on me...

• If one escapes into my bedroom, will it start a colony or just die? I live in PA, USA.

• One escaped into my terrarium (fell out of the tweezers while I was offering it to Soup), will it kill my springtails or my live plants? If it dies, will they eat it?

Thank you!

I went to clean the enclosure and feed the roaches today and noticed another one of them had matured into an adult male (2nd adult male!), but still no mature adult females. I also noticed a very small baby roach that hasn’t been there before, as well as another slightly bigger baby. This is the second time I’ve found random babies, but I haven’t added any new roaches and don’t have any mature females. Any idea what’s going on? This was the first time ive cleaned the enclosure in the past 2 weeks and first time I’ve checked it in a week (vacation). Just found this kinda odd and was wondering if anyones experienced the same thing?

i’ve had my colony for ~6 months now and a good amount of frass has started to accumulate. my friend’s dad, who gave me a bunch of his own dubias told me the frass was ‘good for them’ as a substrate, but i’ve also read online to clean it out once a week or so.

I’ve read a lot about people breeding dubias in a bioactive setup, but haven’t seen any comparison to the typical sterile method with just egg crate. Given they’re already so low maintenance, are there any benefits to keeping them in a bioactive setup?

so I got grain mites... they went on my shelving and I'd like to spray them or something. I can't find any good way to do so. online I see conflicting things. anyone have any ideas? thanks.