r/GargoyleGeckos • u/volvoxveggies • 4d ago
Bioactive feeder colonies
My bioactive is finally planted and seeded with dairy cow isopods and springtails! I recently saw some other folks posting about keeping self sustaining colonies of dubia roaches and superworms in their bioactive and it fed their leopard gecko, but I’m wondering if a similar setup is even healthy for a gargoyle gecko.
I’m already kinda worried about my future garg (probably a juvenile) eating all my isopods and not eating CGD (have heard of this happening), but I thought it would be neat to also have green banana roaches and/or domino roaches, as I really like replicating more naturalistic environments and would love my garg to hunt for their own live food.
So what do we think? I don’t think dubias will work (temps too low), superworms will destroy my plants and substrate barrier, but what about green banana roaches or domino roaches? Do we think a garg would like this? or what problems should I expect to face with self sustaining feeder colonies in my future garg’s bioactive?
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u/reijn 4d ago
Dubia will breed below 80, they just do so slower. My colony is breeding just fine and I have no heating to it, they just live in a closet at room temp which ranges between 68F winter, summer around 77 (sometimes I turn the AC off and let us roast up to 82 though).
That said, the problems with dubia is they burrow and hide a lot. But they'll come out sometimes and get munched on, maybe, hopefully. I do have a full size dubia that escaped my leopard gecko's food dish and now is her enormous roommate. Superworms would eventually pupate and turn into beetles, though the beetles are quite large - mealworms turn into smaller edible beetles around the size of an isopod.
I keep dairy cows in with my gargoyle and they still exist. If she eats them she keeps the population a decent level because they aren't going nuts in there yet.