Dubia Breeding

[Evil Seedlet]

So I got a few T's early this week, my first ever. I was looking around online and in the forums and a lot of people suggest starting a colony of some sort of feeder insect to keep your T's fed at a lower cost.

I was looking at B dubias and a lot of people seem to like them and they look fairly easy to keep, but I was curious how fast they might breed and if one day I'll end up with a zillion more dubias than I know what to do with, only having 3 T's to feed them to? I'll probably get some more T's in the future, but I doubt I'll ever be a hardcore collector with 50 or more or anything.

Anyway, do you think that I could manage a colony of dubias if I started one? Is there any way to slow the breeding down if I need to, like cooling their little home? I don't really want to sell them, not interested in packing and shipping and potentially killing them all with an unhappy customer Any advice? Should I just stick to buying crickets?

(I put this in the insect thread because I'm more curious about the breeding habits of dubias, but if this belongs in one of the T forums I apologize and am totally cool with a move)

 

[wraith]

Dubia don't breed quickly. You will increase the number of Dubia that you buy by about five times every six months. So if you start out with 50 you'll have 250 in six months time. If you feed your dubia off at about two a week to each T you'll feed off 144 in the first six months, that will also reduce your breeding population, so you'll end up with a pretty continuous cycle increasing by about 25 (doubling every six months cycle) kept Dubia every six months.

 

[Evil Seedlet]

thanks much! I was thinking about getting 100 but I think I'll stick to 50 and start feeding them off after the first batch of babies are born. That seems pretty manageable.

 

[winwin]

thanks much! I was thinking about getting 100 but I think I'll stick to 50 and start feeding them off after the first batch of babies are born. That seems pretty manageable.

Is that enough? But if it's once a week, I think it would be ok, I feed my T's everyday so it would be hard to manage that, I'm still waiting for my lat colony to start breeding.