BLUE TONGUE SKINKS

I'm looking to bid on a dubia roach colony on ebay. Is $140-$160 a good price to pay for a large established colony?? It seems good to me, just don't want to overpay. Or should I wait, I'm going to White Plains, NY reptile expo on the 22nd and would they have dubia roach established colonies selling there??

by established colony.............exactly how many roaches?

cause if you buy a hundred dubias for the price the others said it is also a colony....

quote from NOP on your previous topic:

". Also you can buy a pre Started colony on EBay for like $60ish. Seriously just go to ebay and search "Dubia Roach Colony" you get a tub and a bunch of roaches and food and water crystals super easy to care for."

so.............it really depends on how large the colony is and what you get with it - heat lamp and container or so.

Roaches are super easy to keep and breed, I don't see why you would pay for an established colony. Seems steep to me, I'd just get a big tupperware bin and buy 20 or so depending on how big of a colony you want. Might need a heat pad, but otherwise you are good to go with a tub, egg cartons, cardboard boxes etc and scrap food / dog food. Just buy a few adults, it shouldn't cost you anywhere near $150.

I heard it would take 8-12 months to establish a colony though, so i figured paying more might be worth it to have a steady supply. Apparently the one I wanted to buy had thousands of roaches. I have everything I need, just not the roaches. I ended up not getting it anyway, but what might be a good amount and what sizes of roaches to get an established colony going? (Feeding for my Skink, Leopard Gecko, Tegu, and possible 1-2 more lizards if I find a nice arboreal lizard at the expo since I was lucky enough to acquire a 72" tall, 28" wide, 14" deep cage just the other day, which was great since I've been trying to find an arboreal lizard that's right for me for some time.)

thousands is too much


it takes 20 days if you buy adult females with males or so to start finding eggs....so starting up a good colony doesnt really take more than 2 months.

size doesnt matter. they will grow quick and live long.

i think a colony of 20-90 should be sufficient. it all depends on how you wanna feed them to your pets and how often.


there you go. http://homepage.ntlworld.com/bandung/ro ... acare.html

Linnea wrote:it takes 20 days if you buy adult females with males or so to start finding eggs....so starting up a good colony doesnt really take more than 2 months.

But they give live birth?

.____. they keep eggs inside them. if the colony is already mixed the chances are youll find baby roaches at different times anyway....its not so picky xD

Here is a link to a $79 Colony with a tub and food and water crystals much cheaper than the one you looking at and 400+ roaches.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Large-Dubia-Roa ... 231bab1755

NOP wrote:Here is a link to a $79 Colony with a tub and food and water crystals much cheaper than the one you looking at and 400+ roaches.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Large-Dubia-Roa ... 231bab1755

Yea I saw this as well, just not liking the $40 shipping! I'd rather use my own plastic bin and save all that shipping. I found 100, 1inch plus dubias for $28 and free shipping as well as the same person selling 200 for $47, 300 for $65 with all free shipping. Does this sound like a good deal? From what retail websites and other things I've found on ebay it seems good. I'm definitely waiting to see what I find at the NY expo before buying any of these. I did just purchase 28-30 Hissing roaches for $25 though. :]

Linnea wrote:.____. they keep eggs inside them. if the colony is already mixed the chances are youll find baby roaches at different times anyway....its not so picky xD

I found with mine, after a while they somehow ended up on the same schedule. So suddenly there would be TONS of little babies, they would grow up for a bit and then you'd have this happy period where they were all nice juvie feeding size, and then they would be fed off or left as breeders and you'd have to wait for babies again. Female seemed to give birth in the same period, so it wasn't this happy constant supply of roaches at various sizes.

I'd recommend getting a couple colonies going if you are looking for a constant staple food, when I had ~40 in the same colony it would always be similar timed babies, so there was periods of great sized feeders and then a wait while the next babies were born and grew into a decent size.

Yea I was unsure if I should get a little mix or just all adults for this reason. Do you think separate colonies would be on different schedules, or should I just have a bigger colony going instead? I do want a constant supply of them, even having a short period of not feeding off as many might be okay if it's not too long or too little the amount roaches.

LarissaLurid wrote:Yea I was unsure if I should get a little mix or just all adults for this reason. Do you think separate colonies would be on different schedules, or should I just have a bigger colony going instead? I do want a constant supply of them, even having a short period of not feeding off as many might be okay if it's not too long or too little the amount roaches.

The guy I got them from had hundreds in a large tank and they were on the same schedule, even in a 6' tank... so I'd try separate colonies.

alright

Greg(Centralian/kei breeder) said I can have his dubias for free .
This site helped me learn about them:
http://theroachranch.com/

xxmonitorlizardxx wrote:Greg(Centralian/kei breeder) said I can have his dubias for free .
This site helped me learn about them:
http://theroachranch.com/

D: luckyy! And thanks for the link I'll take a look

Should I use a few heat mats, or one long heat cable to go under 3 tubs?

You only need one heat mat. Allow them to regulate their temperature by have a hot side and cool side to go on.

How to heat:
http://www.nyworms.com/roachtanks.htm
Care:
http://www.nyworms.com/dubiacare.htm

Thanks I was considering heat tape as well. I think I'll end up going with that.

As I've been pointing out, save some $ and worry by ditching heat tape and using heat cable instead. Heat tape is designed to get really hot. You NEED a thermo-control with it. Heat cable is designed to get warm, so therm-control isn't needed (control how warm an area is by moving the lines of cable closer together/farther apart). If you have heat tape with a thermo and the thermo fails, you risk burns and fires. I just can not see the sense in buying something designed to get very hot when all you need is something warm. Heat tape just seems too risky to me.