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- Mar 1, 2008
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I just purchased a bunch of dubias and am curious what everyone is using for bedding. I read pine shavings is a bad idea and some keepers use nothing but egg cartons. What do you use?
Here's what I do:I just purchased a bunch of dubias and am curious what everyone is using for bedding. I read pine shavings is a bad idea and some keepers use nothing but egg cartons. What do you use?
I don't know how long it takes them to get from 100 to 1000, but I know that as a colony they're slow growing at first. Once you get them to 1000, you should have little or no problem maintaining that.Just use egg cartons bro. It'll be easier for you and the roaches. Oh by the way, I just got mine today! Although not a lot, it's a start. Anyone know how long it'll take for 100 dubias to get to a 1000?
What are red wrigglers?I'm actually thinking of tossing some red wrigglers in there. I'd have to keep the substrate real moist, but in theory they should eat the frass and any spilled food and mold. I'm about to start a lateralis colony and I think I'm going to do this. I really hate cleaning out roach enclosures, so if I could get some kind of perpetual ecosystem cleaning going on that would be optimal.
Yeah not sure whether it will work. But my understanding is that the primary reason we keep roach bins dry is to prevent mold. My hypothesis is that the worms will eat whatever food starts molding and whatever mold forms. I'm not aware of roaches particularly favoring dry conditions. However, we do know that low humidity is hard for them (lateralis casings don't hatch, for example). So I was going to keep it pretty moist.I have been keeping red wigglers for a while now, but more for environmental reason. They prefer veggies and fruits scrap, and occasional paper and dry leaves. They like the substrate (basically the scrap and their casting) moist, almost soggy. I keep them in worm bins and if the conditions isn't right, they tend to want to migrate out of the bins. They are quite an escape artists too, although you wouldn't miss them when you have thousands in the bins. But you can see dried up worms outside the bins, once the preferred condition is achieved, you'd see fewer or no worms outside the bins.
I'm not sure if it will work with the roach colony, since you want to keep the roach colony more dry than moist. And they probably won't eat frass.
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