Anyone currently using Dubia

[Mombo]

Murph is up and going now and eating like a pig. So my dubia colony I started while he was hibernating is finally about to get some use.

For anyone using dubias what size ones are you feeding yours? I had 10 or so in his feeding tub of all sizes to see which ones he would eat and how many and he annihilated all of them, didnt care about the size at all haha.

He is still a young guy though and I wasn't sure if I should be picking only smaller ones or if its alright for him to eat the adult ones. Ive read the bigger ones have more exoskeleton to them. Just want to make sure he wont get injured or whatever eating them.

Since he went into hibernation so quick my colony has well over a thousand of these guys in there haha. Its ridiculous.

 

[Mombo]

Just to show his size I guess. He has been great so far on a side note. I put my hand in there when its time for him to eat and he comes over and climbs up my arm a bit so I can get him out and put him in his tub. Then the same when he goes back into the enclosure.

No whips or bites yet haha. It is crazy how smart they are. We've had him for 5 months now but he went into hibernation a few days after we got him so its been a crazy week now that he is up.

 

[Walter1]

View attachment 11849

Just to show his size I guess. He has been great so far on a side note. I put my hand in there when its time for him to eat and he comes over and climbs up my arm a bit so I can get him out and put him in his tub. Then the same when he goes back into the enclosure.

No whips or bites yet haha. It is crazy how smart they are. We've had him for 5 months now but he went into hibernation a few days after we got him so its been a crazy week now that he is up.

He looks great. Start with roaches the width of his head.

 

[Mombo]

Roaches as long as his head is wide? Sounds good. Prob sub adult size right before you can tell what gender they are then. Do you think the exoskeletons of the adults could be a problem for him down the road when he is larger? Not sure if they could cause an impaction or if tegus are big enough to handle it.

SOOOO on a completely different side note. For anyone wanting to do this. I started a dubia colony in December after getting Murph in November so we would have something to feed him in house. Well he stayed in hibernation until a week ago so the dubias have been just growing since then. I started with about 50. After this last post I thought it would be interesting to clean out the colony and freshen it up and see how many were really in there....... without spending time actually counting them I would say there is easily 10,000 in there. Holy!!!!!! Hundreds of adults and just thousands of babies all the way up into the different sizes. Absolutely crazy town.

 

[Walter1]

Roaches as long as his head is wide? Sounds good. Prob sub adult size right before you can tell what gender they are then. Do you think the exoskeletons of the adults could be a problem for him down the road when he is larger? Not sure if they could cause an impaction or if tegus are big enough to handle it.

SOOOO on a completely different side note. For anyone wanting to do this. I started a dubia colony in December after getting Murph in November so we would have something to feed him in house. Well he stayed in hibernation until a week ago so the dubias have been just growing since then. I started with about 50. After this last post I thought it would be interesting to clean out the colony and freshen it up and see how many were really in there....... without spending time actually counting them I would say there is easily 10,000 in there. Holy!!!!!! Hundreds of adults and just thousands of babies all the way up into the different sizes. Absolutely crazy town.

Provide big variety of food. nothing but dubias would not be good.

How do you keep dubias?

 

[Mombo]

That is definitely the plan. We were planning on doing dubias with other meals a couple times a week. Its just insane how many we have currently haha. We dont want him getting to aggressive for them or addicted to them or something. He loves chasing them and crunching them

They are super easy to keep. I have a big plastic tub that I put about 10 egg crates in. I also put a couple aluminum loaf pans in there. I throw some dry roach chow that I blend up at home, and some orange in one tin and the other tin I fill with water crystals. I got a cheap sunbeam heat pad that I put on medium and lay under the tub. And thats it. I check em every couple days to fill up there food and water and they just do there thing. Reproduce like crazy. Unless you live somewhere really warm the heat mat and the oranges I think if what makes them go wild.

 

[dpjm]

There is a small advantage to using larger roaches instead of smaller. For example, feeding him 30 g of larger roaches is better than 30 g of smaller roaches. The reason is that the 30 g of larger roaches will contain less chitin than the 30 g of smaller roaches. Chitin is the material that makes up the majority of the exoskeleton of most insects and is not very digestible.

Make sure you are coating the roaches in calcium powder; every roach, every time. They are deficient in calcium without it.