Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Does anyone here feed leopard geckos, or similarly sized critters, dubia roaches? I'm feeding leopards and crested geckos now, compared to the last three years where I've only kept snakes (feeding over 100 baby bearded dragons, 4 leopards, and my three adult beardeds kind of burned me out on lizards for a while), and I've been thinking about starting a roach colony for ease of feeding. Right now, the leopards are getting mostly mealworms, with a waxworm thrown in here & there, and occaisional crickets. The cresteds aren't such an issue, as they'll live solely off worms and "crested gecko diet" perfectly fine. Keeping the mealies & wax worms in the fridge, and a rubbermaid of roaches that breed themselves sounds a lot better than having crickets running around everywhere, and making noise.

So, if anyone does feed dubias (or any other species of roach), will your adults take full grown dubias, or do you have to feed them out partially grown? My thought was if I start with a small colony of dubias, between the leos & the cresteds, I could feed out all of the babies as they grow. If I start to get too many adults, I'd start "harvesting" the babies smaller, and feed twice as many. If adults are too big, I could always freeze them after they get to the point where my geckos can't eat them, and wouldn't care.

Are roaches a viable alternative to crickets? I can get a "starter colony" of dubias at my local herp show for $10. The guys down at the show said that the roaches will work good, but I haven't found anyone who feeds their leopards or cresteds dubias.

I'm posting something on the leopard gecko board, so I'll ask the calcium question there directly, but, since I forgot to take it out of the subject of that, I may as well mention it-
why should leopard geckos calcium not have d3 in it?

I feed my Leopard gecko mealworms & Lobster roaches (Naupheta cinerea). Although I breed 7 species of roaches, the adult Lobsters are more proportioned for the adult Leo gex.

From what I know, all nocturnal geckos do not need calcium that contains D3 as they don't synthesize it into their bones like diurnal lizards in conjunction with UVb light sources. I sometimes use calcium with D3 with my Leopard gecko & haven't noticed any detrimental problems from it.

I'm sure there are more detailed scientific explanations to this; ( I probably have read this, but have forgotten) & hopefully someone can add to this.

Dubia do get much larger than lobsters but if you are looking for a feeder that is a non-climber then they are a good solution and a great substitute for crickets. I use these for a similar size lizard and feed them the half grown numphs. They take them with gusto and they are easier to separate out than lobsters. I also feed the smaller nymphs to my babies. It's hard to find small feeders for the hatchlings and small babies and the roaches are a great solution as they start out quite tiny and grow to whatever size you need.

I have never had to kill off any large portion of my colony as feeding off the nymphs seems to keep it under control.
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Marcia - FroggieB Dragons
www.froggieb.com/MHDHome.html

I definitely want non-climbers. I want something that I can house my adults in a small plastic container, and not worry about escapees EVER.

How fast do your dubias grow? If I'm gonna need to feed half-grown nymphs, how long will they stay half-grown? I'm only feeding two crested geckos and I'll probably only have two leos permanently. I know it would take me a while to figure out the ratio I'd need to keep me in supply, and some experimentation with it. I think I'm gonna pick up a colony of them, and try it out. Really, I don't need to worry too much about it.. if my colony is too small, I'll just use more mealies & wax worms.

I used to breed leopard geckos and currently have 34 of them that I feed roaches to (though not exclusively). A full grown leopard gecko actually can take on adult B. dubia. You'd be surprised how quickly your geckos will learn to eat just the meat and not the wings. But I wouldn't recommend doing that unless you offer your leos warmer temps. If you don't let the warm side get above 85, then they will probably have a harder time trying to digest such a big food item.

As for dusting, vitamin D is fat soluble. With water soluble vitamins, after the body gets what it needs to, it will just pass the rest out of the system. But with fat soluble vitamins, the body will store it until it builds up to toxic levels. I've never had any problems using calcium with D3, but in general I stay away from vitamin supplements. Roaches have symbionts that produce vitamins for them, and that gets passed to your geckos.
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