- Joined
- Jan 6, 2007
- Messages
- 2,518
I have experimented with basicly 3 types of food for my T's and other pets, and want to share my thoughts and get yours as well.
First off I started by feeding crickets to some scorps I had. they worked fine until my scorps got mites form the crickets and died. Later i Had some leopard geckos and used crickets and it was OK. The down side to the crickets in my opinion was the smell and frailty of them, and i really hated the cricket songs they would play for my wile i was tring to sleep!
So after that i decided to go with Meal Worms. My geckos loved them and they didn't have the same problems as the crickets, So i decided to breed them for feeders. What i found out is they breed rather slowly and when you got a lot they really smell like amonnia. And even when i had a lot of them they would run out quickly, and i was purchasing more from the petshop.
When i got into T's i ended up going back to crickets, and remembered all the reasons i didn't like them, and I had soo much money invested into my T's that i was not going to risk another parasite epidemic. So i started looking into other food sources and came accross roaches. Once i Knew about roaches i looked into which species was going to be right for me, and decided on Blaptica Dubia.
When i got my new roach colony up and running, me, my T's, and the geckos loved them so much I gave away all the meal Worms and stopped buying crickets. It was the best thing i ever did for my pets, and for me!
From what I have read Roaches are way more nutrious than crickets, and with a large colony you can feed every thing from tiny Slings to BIG Monsterous T's. I chose B. Dubia because they can't climb smooth surfaces, cant fly, the adults are super easy to sex, and they reproduce easily and at a fast pace.
THIS IS HOW I KEEP MY ROACH COLONY:
-I went and purchased a 32gal plastic tub
-bought another heat mat
-cut an openig in the lid for vent, and used my sodder gun and melted a peice of screen onto the lid, you could just use silicon to adhere the screen as well
-stick the heat mat under the tub, you may need to cut a path for the cord, if the tub has support edges that get it the way
-place a number of egg cartons or crates for hiding
-and make sure to leave room for a feeding tray, i use a terra cotta pot holder. This helps keep the tub clean and prevent molding.
some people use bedding of different sorts however i do not. I find it easier and CLEANER to just let them produce waste for bedding. The nymphs acutually get good stuff out of it. And if you are doing a cleaning, it is much easier with out bedding. FYI, you need not clean the colony hardly ever if you feed them right.
Their waste acutually smells kind of good to me, and like i said is benificial to the nymphs. The only problem you will have with cleanliness is if you feed them too much moist foods. Never put in so much Moist food that they cant eat it in under 24 hrs. Their moist veggi food is simply left over table scraps or the peices we dont use for cooking. I throw in hand fulls of Dry Cat Food too, and they eat it up quick, that way they get some protien too. If you keep the moisture levels under control you wont have to cleen the colony but maybe once every 6-24 months, it just depends on how big a tank/tub you have for them.
They say they can reach adulthood after 3 months, but Like T's a lot of it depends on temp and food. I saw a female with 17 fresh nymphs this morning, and if you give them time you will have very large numbers to use for feeding your T's. I only feed my T's adult male Dubias, this is to ensure maximum groth of the colony. I want the females making more food for my spiders.
So in a nut shell, I believe B. Dubias are the Perfect Food Source for me to feed to my T's. I absolutly love them. If you have a Dubia colony or any other type of roach colony at home for your T's please let me know how you keep them. Also if you have some other type of food source that you raise at home, please let us all know about it, and how well it works for you.
Here are pics of how i house the Dubia colony
First off I started by feeding crickets to some scorps I had. they worked fine until my scorps got mites form the crickets and died. Later i Had some leopard geckos and used crickets and it was OK. The down side to the crickets in my opinion was the smell and frailty of them, and i really hated the cricket songs they would play for my wile i was tring to sleep!
So after that i decided to go with Meal Worms. My geckos loved them and they didn't have the same problems as the crickets, So i decided to breed them for feeders. What i found out is they breed rather slowly and when you got a lot they really smell like amonnia. And even when i had a lot of them they would run out quickly, and i was purchasing more from the petshop.
When i got into T's i ended up going back to crickets, and remembered all the reasons i didn't like them, and I had soo much money invested into my T's that i was not going to risk another parasite epidemic. So i started looking into other food sources and came accross roaches. Once i Knew about roaches i looked into which species was going to be right for me, and decided on Blaptica Dubia.
When i got my new roach colony up and running, me, my T's, and the geckos loved them so much I gave away all the meal Worms and stopped buying crickets. It was the best thing i ever did for my pets, and for me!
From what I have read Roaches are way more nutrious than crickets, and with a large colony you can feed every thing from tiny Slings to BIG Monsterous T's. I chose B. Dubia because they can't climb smooth surfaces, cant fly, the adults are super easy to sex, and they reproduce easily and at a fast pace.
THIS IS HOW I KEEP MY ROACH COLONY:
-I went and purchased a 32gal plastic tub
-bought another heat mat
-cut an openig in the lid for vent, and used my sodder gun and melted a peice of screen onto the lid, you could just use silicon to adhere the screen as well
-stick the heat mat under the tub, you may need to cut a path for the cord, if the tub has support edges that get it the way
-place a number of egg cartons or crates for hiding
-and make sure to leave room for a feeding tray, i use a terra cotta pot holder. This helps keep the tub clean and prevent molding.
some people use bedding of different sorts however i do not. I find it easier and CLEANER to just let them produce waste for bedding. The nymphs acutually get good stuff out of it. And if you are doing a cleaning, it is much easier with out bedding. FYI, you need not clean the colony hardly ever if you feed them right.
Their waste acutually smells kind of good to me, and like i said is benificial to the nymphs. The only problem you will have with cleanliness is if you feed them too much moist foods. Never put in so much Moist food that they cant eat it in under 24 hrs. Their moist veggi food is simply left over table scraps or the peices we dont use for cooking. I throw in hand fulls of Dry Cat Food too, and they eat it up quick, that way they get some protien too. If you keep the moisture levels under control you wont have to cleen the colony but maybe once every 6-24 months, it just depends on how big a tank/tub you have for them.
They say they can reach adulthood after 3 months, but Like T's a lot of it depends on temp and food. I saw a female with 17 fresh nymphs this morning, and if you give them time you will have very large numbers to use for feeding your T's. I only feed my T's adult male Dubias, this is to ensure maximum groth of the colony. I want the females making more food for my spiders.
So in a nut shell, I believe B. Dubias are the Perfect Food Source for me to feed to my T's. I absolutly love them. If you have a Dubia colony or any other type of roach colony at home for your T's please let me know how you keep them. Also if you have some other type of food source that you raise at home, please let us all know about it, and how well it works for you.
Here are pics of how i house the Dubia colony
