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Dubia roaches are widely known as one of the easiest feeder insects to raise. They are typically very low-maintenance and hardy, producing a steady supply of lean protein for your pet. But if you are getting a new pet and need to scale up your dubia colony, you might have some trouble getting them to grow and reproduce faster.
In this article, we’ll talk about how to maximize the output of your dubia roach colony so that you can get the most out of your feeders. Let’s get into the details.
How to Set Up a Dubia Roach Colony
You’re probably already pretty familiar with dubia roaches as a species, but it helps to know a bit about their biology.
Dubias are native to the temperate forests of Argentina. They spend most of their lives on the forest floor, foraging in the leaf litter. Because they live on the ground, they have slowly lost their ability to fly.
So in captivity, you’re trying to mimic the conditions of a thick layer of leaves on the forest floor. What that means is dark, warm, and moderately humid.
A simple dubia roach set up (and they should always be simple) starts with a plastic storage bin. 10 to 20 gallons is a good size to start with, but if you’re scaling up your operation, you will probably want either multiple storage bins, or one large one (30+ gallons). This amount of space will suffice for over a hundred roaches.
The storage bins need air flow, but they also need to be dark. For starters, try to put them somewhere dark, like a closet. And ideally (as we’ll talk about later), you don’t want to remove the lid too much.
So the best option is to cut some kind of a hole in the lid and glue some dark-colored mesh over it. Too much air flow will drop the humidity, too little can cause mold to grow inside.
Additionally, you need to maintain a constant heat of 70-90°F and humidity at 50-60%. Depending on where you live, you may want to buy a heating element to help maintain this.
Heating pads work really well for roach colonies, although you might not want to have it touching the colony directly. Luckily, the amount of humidity in your house should be just about right for your roaches. We’ll talk a little about monitoring heat and humidity in a little while.
Increasing Dubia Roach Reproduction
Trying to speed up your dubia roaches’ growth has two effects: they will grow faster, and also reproduce faster. Just be aware that speeding up their metabolism will also make them reproduce quicker. But if your goal is to increase your colony’s yield, this is a good thing.
Creating an Optimal Sex Ratio
In setting up your colony, one thing you need to keep a careful eye on is the sex ratio of your roaches. The idea is that females can only mate once before they have to carry eggs, whereas males can mate as often as there are females without eggs around.
Ideally, you want a ratio of three or four females to each male. The best way to keep this up is by primarily using males as pet food. More of your females should be kept in the colony, where they can grow and keep laying eggs.
Telling females and males apart is pretty easy with dubia roaches. Males have large, non-functional wings on their backs. Females may have tiny wing stubs, but they will barely be noticeable. The last segment of a male’s abdomen is also straighter and more pointed, where a female’s abdomen ends with a wide, round segment.
Genetic Diversity
The other thing to keep an eye on is inbreeding. Long-term, you will need to introduce new roaches into the colony, or your roaches might interbreed until they start to have health problems or die. In biology, this is called “inbreeding depression,” and can cause populations of animals in the wild to die off en masse.
Every couple of months, it’s wise to add some new adults into your colony. If your colony is larger (in the hundreds), you can space these introductions out more.
Maximizing Your Dubia Roach Growth and Output
Everything else you need to know about increasing your dubias’ output is about conditions in the colony. If you can consistently keep your colony (or colonies) warm, moderately humid, dark, and free of stress and disease, your roaches will grow much faster.
Climate
The general range for dubias is 70-90°F, but the magic number is 90°F. The closer you can get to 90, without going over, the better you’ll do. If you exceed 90°F, your roaches will slow back down and start to die.
The other magic number is 60% humidity. Above that causes mold and disease, below is too dry. The key to dialing these in is getting a thermometer/hygrometer that you can check remotely. This way, you can monitor the conditions without having to open the lid.
Diet
Dubias do fine on grains or cat food. They do even better with a mix of veggies. But citrus is a key to keeping their metabolisms high. Give them some oranges or tangerines and they’ll start to grow quicker. This will also help keep their hydration up.
Reducing Stress
The last thing is that your dubias need a stress-free environment. This means checking and disturbing them as little as possible. Longer, undisturbed periods spent in the ideal conditions will ramp up their metabolisms and keep them growing and reproducing as fast as possible.
Darkness is the other major factor in reducing stress. Dubias feel most comfortable in safe, dark conditions where they have lots of places to hide and don’t feel threatened.
If you can, open the colony only to feed them, harvest feeders, and clean. Monitor the conditions inside remotely, and make sure they have everything they need. Otherwise, keep it warm, dark, and humid, and your dubias will grow like crazy.