Breeding your own feeders

[Manolomuro]

What? How? I literally had to feed off every adult I had to stop them from breeding for a few months so I could attempt to put a dent in their numbers. For reference, those are 15" tongs and that's a 10g in the background.
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Do you use them as feeders? what are you feeding? if it is T's, how many do you have?

 

[Schiem]

My experience with both dubias and red runners is that they need >85 degrees to breed. I have an incubator that I throw a few adults in every few months to refresh the colonies, so there's very little maintenance required. It's also nice because I'm 99% positive that they can't breed if they get loose in my house.

I often see people report getting them to breed at much lower temperatures, it makes me wonder if there are sub species that have adapted to lower temperatures or something.

 

[jrh3]

Red Runner Roaches for me.

 

[l4nsky]

Dang man I wish I had that much. And I'm not really sure. I had about 80 or 90 I was starting with about 4 months ago, I fed off a few smaller ones but left the bigger ones to breed, and after a couple months was left with just 6 larger nymphs. No molts anywhere in sight, none escapes, and they didn't eat too much food. I have about 2" of substrate I moisten about once a week, and egg crate in there. They just slowly disappeared over time. Absolutely none of them escaped, I'm 1000% sure of this as I'm using an airtight lid with mesh hotglued on the top of the lid. Haven't seen any escape at all whatsoever. They just dwindled over time and I assume they ate each other because I definitely didn't feed off that many and only had 6 left, so I just fed those off and bought 150 more and trying again. I used mainly oranges, carrots and water gel. I'm not sure what else to try. But this 150 I'm not feeding any off and feeding crix until I see some ooths and little nymphs. Idk what else to do. I prefer them over crickets though.

I've never really done anything special for them. I've kept them bioactive with cork bark, barebottom with cork, barebottom with eggcrate, and substrate with eggcrate and they always bred. I did start with a 500 count colony because I wanted to feed them off immediatly and I do keep a regulated heatpad on one side of their enclosure, set to 82 degrees. I feed them the super berry mix from thefeederfarm, which I buy 10 pounds at a time. If I feed fresh, it's once a week at maximum, but I typically don't. I don't add water to the substrate, but I keep a large bowl of water crystals in the enclosure. The result is a dry substrate, but a RH that hovers around 60%. I just recently had a new generation of adults mature, so they'll probably start breeding again soon . I only managed to get rid of ~1000 in the few months they weren't breeding which really isn't enough to stop their exponential growth lol.

Do you use them as feeders? what are you feeding? if it is T's, how many do you have?

Yep, I'm only feeding tarantulas at the moment and I don't have nearly enough to keep the lat population in check (once my T's reach 6" DLS, I tend to feed them from my dubia colony instead). I give them to friends who feed lizards and T's as well as cutting off small starter colonies for people that are local to me.

 

[JonnyTorch]

I've never really done anything special for them. I've kept them bioactive with cork bark, barebottom with cork, barebottom with eggcrate, and substrate with eggcrate and they always bred. I did start with a 500 count colony because I wanted to feed them off immediatly and I do keep a regulated heatpad on one side of their enclosure, set to 82 degrees. I feed them the super berry mix from thefeederfarm, which I buy 10 pounds at a time. If I feed fresh, it's once a week at maximum, but I typically don't. I don't add water to the substrate, but I keep a large bowl of water crystals in the enclosure. The result is a dry substrate, but a RH that hovers around 60%. I just recently had a new generation of adults mature, so they'll probably start breeding again soon . I only managed to get rid of ~1000 in the few months they weren't breeding which really isn't enough to stop their exponential growth lol.


Yep, I'm only feeding tarantulas at the moment and I don't have nearly enough to keep the lat population in check (once my T's reach 6" DLS, I tend to feed them from my dubia colony instead). I give them to friends who feed lizards and T's as well as cutting off small starter colonies for people that are local to me.

I'll take any lats you need gone lol. I suppose that heat mat is helping the breeding. Mine are room temp around 72 degrees. That's good to know about that berry mix.

 

[l4nsky]

I'll take any lats you need gone lol. I suppose that heat mat is helping the breeding. Mine are room temp around 72 degrees. That's good to know about that berry mix.

Lol let me know if you're visiting STL for the holidays. I'm sure we can arrange for you to head back to Cali with a couple hundred or more.

 

[JonnyTorch]

Lol let me know if you're visiting STL for the holidays. I'm sure we can arrange for you to head back to Cali with a couple hundred or more.

I have a plane ticket voucher with no date on it yet I plan to go back to STL when it's a tad warmer. I'll let you know for sure. Can grab lunch.

 

[aprilmayjunebugs]

I used mainly oranges, carrots and water gel. I'm not sure what else to try.

Sounds like they need protein.

Super Berry Mix, from the description on Amazon (where it's not currently available)
"This chow has our same main base ingredients....whole grains, vitamins, minerals and protein with a touch of sweet berries mixed in. We make this in large batches of around 100lbs at a time, and we love to switch up our flavors every few months! What will we do next..."
Has great reviews everywhere that I saw and probably worth the price to avoid hassle, the same thing can be achieved with fish food or turtle food or rabbit food or cat food or...

 

[l4nsky]

Sounds like they need protein.

Super Berry Mix, from the description on Amazon (where it's not currently available)
"This chow has our same main base ingredients....whole grains, vitamins, minerals and protein with a touch of sweet berries mixed in. We make this in large batches of around 100lbs at a time, and we love to switch up our flavors every few months! What will we do next..."
Has great reviews everywhere that I saw and probably worth the price to avoid hassle, the same thing can be achieved with fish food or turtle food or rabbit food or cat food or...

They primarily sell on ebay now, probably due to the cut that Amazon takes.

 

[goonius]

Dubia are easy. So are red runners (B lateralis).

Red runners provoke a better feeding response because they don’t bury themselves and play dead like dubias, so that would be my recommend. They do need warmth to breed well, however. I pretty much accept that they don’t do much breeding in the winter.

 

[BoyFromLA]

@l4nsky Is that how you keep them? I am just curious.

 

[aprilmayjunebugs]

They primarily sell on ebay now, probably due to the cut that Amazon takes.

That's what I gathered, 10 available atm

 

[JonnyTorch]

Sounds like they need protein.

Super Berry Mix, from the description on Amazon (where it's not currently available)
"This chow has our same main base ingredients....whole grains, vitamins, minerals and protein with a touch of sweet berries mixed in. We make this in large batches of around 100lbs at a time, and we love to switch up our flavors every few months! What will we do next..."
Has great reviews everywhere that I saw and probably worth the price to avoid hassle, the same thing can be achieved with fish food or turtle food or rabbit food or cat food or...

I've tried dog food and they didn't like it. It's got protein in it

 

[aprilmayjunebugs]

I've tried dog food and they didn't like it. It's got protein in it

Fish flakes are soft, not pleasant in the smell department though.

 

[JonnyTorch]

Fish flakes are soft, not pleasant in the smell department though.

I can try. Beats the smell of dead crickets any day

 

[l4nsky]

@l4nsky Is that how you keep them? I am just curious.

I've never really done anything special for them. I've kept them bioactive with cork bark, barebottom with cork, barebottom with eggcrate, and substrate with eggcrate and they always bred. I did start with a 500 count colony because I wanted to feed them off immediatly and I do keep a regulated heatpad on one side of their enclosure, set to 82 degrees. I feed them the super berry mix from thefeederfarm, which I buy 10 pounds at a time. If I feed fresh, it's once a week at maximum, but I typically don't. I don't add water to the substrate, but I keep a large bowl of water crystals in the enclosure. The result is a dry substrate, but a RH that hovers around 60%.

Yep. That's pretty much what I've dialed my care down to for my dubia and lateralis. I've tried other prepared diets as well, but they were more expensive with really no bulk discounting, so I stick with thefeederfarm.

Here's the setup I use for my roaches (went into a bit of detail here - https://arachnoboards.com/threads/new-lateralis-tote.348717/):


The lids are fully vented now as it promotes better air circulation and less smell (they were only partially vented when I made that lateralis tote thread).

I really like the elevated food/water platform that I made custom to fit these totes. Previously, I had to change out their bowls a few times a week because they were always dragging substrate into it. Also, being on the ground, the buffalo beetles had easier access to the food and the population would grow much faster, necessitating more enclosure deep cleanings to knock them back. I see myself using these for as long as I breed feeder roaches.


And finally, just for reference, the previous colony picture I posted with several thousand lateralis was taken on January 14th, 2022. Here's the same colony from May 31st, 2021:

And the viable ootheca I pulled from the substrate during that enclosure cleaning in May 2021 as well:

 

[Vermis]

Mealworms have been easier to breed for me.
They pupate fast, just separate the pupa in a different container so the other worms dont feast on them, and youre gonna have beetles with a lot of tiny mealworms in a few weeks.
Perfect for tiny slings

Exactly this. I have roaches. I almost like roaches better than tarantulas. But for the OP's parameters very little beats the basic requirements of mealworms.

I only stopped breeding them myself when the frass started giving me hay-fever symptoms. I breed morio worms now. A little bit more involved: a couple of organiser boxes for pupating; a small breeding tub with coir, on mild heat, for the adult beetles; and when that becomes so full of hatchling worms that they start eating the remaining eggs, I remove the beetles to a temporary tub and dump the contents of the main container into a bigger, unheated coir tub. More coir for the adults and go again.

I have orange head and red head roaches, part feeders, part pets. Both pump out a steady, satisfying supply of nymphs. The substrate for the orange heads fairly writhes when you disturb it. But while I have hundreds of each roach, I must have thousands of morios from tiny hatchlings to 2" big 'uns. More than I know what to do with. Good thing I'm getting chickens.

(Fix that auto spellcheck on my phone. No, it's-a not me, Mario...)

 

[Vermis]

Also, being on the ground, the buffalo beetles had easier access to the food and the population would grow much faster,

See? Can't beat the beetles.

That feeding platform is pretty nifty though. I need to read further.

 

[l4nsky]

I only stopped breeding them myself when the frass started giving me hay-fever symptoms.

Yeah, that's one thing that not a lot of people mention when they discuss breeding feeder roaches. You can develop allergies to their frass over time. I've never heard of anaphylaxis from frass, so it's usually not serious allergies. More like runny nose and watery eyes. I tend to wear a HN-95 mask when I'm cleaning enclosures to avoid this as much as possible.

See? Can't beat the beetles.

That feeding platform is pretty nifty though. I need to read further.

Lol can't beat them, but IME you can definently get a better control over their population by elevating the food. When I used to feed at ground level, I would have to completely dump out the food bowl and freeze its contents like once a week because it would become a breeding ground just full of unwanted larvae. I haven't had to do that once since I started elevating the bowls.