Dubia roach ownership; what I've learned

[Ratmosphere]

I'm usually a cricket guy but I recently gave a try at Dubia roaches. I bought a 50 count at the last expo. I was curious on how they would do as feeders. Months ago I went to an allergist and found out I'm allergic to roach waste. However, this didn't stop me from getting some. It made me want to test how strong the reaction would be. Here's some things I observed.

When doing maintenance in the enclosure, if the poo gets on me or around me I get itchy. The itch lasts for an hour or so which isn't too bad. If I use gloves and a mask there is no itch. I always wanted to see how the allergy would react and it's pretty mild.

The Dubia roach is a hard to kill animal from my experience. I haven't had one die off since I got them and that's amazing to me. I usually have a good amount of crickets die but the Dubia is pretty strong. I've been giving them fresh veggies every few days and they seem happy. They even started to reproduce which blew my mind.

The drawbacks of the Dubia is that if not pre-killed or eaten immediately, they burrow. If you are feeding an animal in a tight enclosure and a Dubia isn't immediately eaten, you could spend some time trying to get it out. That's a major drawback. An other drawback would be the amount of waste produced. A pro to that would be that they don't stink like crickets which is a relief. An other pro would be since Dubias are way bigger than crickets, you don't have to feed so frequently which is also a relief.

Hope you enjoyed my observations and hope this helps.

 

[LawnShrimp]

Pretty much everything but the allergy is my experience with dubias. I got two litters of nymphs within a week of their arrival which was amazing, and none of the them have died except for a few from a bad ooth. The nymphs are all doing fine and all of the females are gravid again.

I do agree that most feeders burrow, both species of cricket and most blaberid roaches like dubias just disappear into the soil when given the chance. As far as waste goes, I keep my dubias in a pretty thick layer of frass and dead leaves as a dry substrate which works quite well for me as it gives them something to grip on and provides food for the nymphs (frass is an important first meal). Unfortunately for someone with a roach allergy keeping large amounts of frass isn't possible, so that would be more of a problem for you.

The fact that dubias have next to no smell compared to crickets is probably my favorite thing about them too.