Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I ordered 1000 pinheads and I was lucky to get half of those to live long enough to get 1/4 in to feed to my two small beardies and then they only lasted a week and a half. Then I ordered 1000 1/2 in crickets and they were stuck in the mail for 6 days and all but a small handful were dead.The company is sending new ones but what do I do in the meantime they wont send them till next week sometime. They both eat greens and pellets but I need to get ahold of some easy to raise bugs..How much should I expect to buy? My bds are about 6-7 inches long. What are waxworms? I have no problem cutting up insects into bite size pieces I had to do this with a few nightcrawlers and the beardies loved them I dont think they are very high in nutrition but at least they have no chiton..This is really frustrating me I dont want to have to give these guys up because I cant feed them right...The lady I bought them from assured me that all I needed was pellets and greens but I know when I started feeding them crickets too they suddenly started growing like crazy..So Exactly how many crickets should I order to have enough until I can order again..I would love to only order once a month..Would waxworms or silkies be a better choice and how many of those should I order..I keep coming up short....Help me Please!!!! Sila

be really convenient...Thanks

Pinheads are a little more fragile than older crickets. They tend to die from dehydration a lot more quickly. Once you actually get them it is easier to keep them alive. I use a large rubbermaid tub. They get a light for heat and it is set on a timer. 12 hours on 12 off. Keep the temps in the mid seventies to low eighties and keep plenty of fresh potatoes or carrots in their cage for moisture. I feed them a mix of oatmeal, baby cereal and powdered milk. Make sure they have plenty of eggs crates to climb and hide in otherwise they tend to be canibalistic. In the meantime you should be able to pick some up from a pet store until the next shipment arrives. Another option to consider is silkworms. They are highly nutrional and if you raise them from the egg stage are reasonably priced. They are pretty easy to maintain and dragons love them. What part of Kansas? I'm in Overland Park.

Mike
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If you can read this, thank a teacher. If you are reading it in English, thank a soldier.

but they seem kinda expensive. if the crickets keep dying I guess then it might be cheaper in the long run..I live about 45 minutes from Manhatten, so its a long trip to the petstore..Last week I bought 5 dozen crickets and they lasted two days..Of course I also fed a skink but he doesnt eat as much as the bds..I wish I lived in a big city so I could get what I needed when I needed it....

I dont know who your getting crix from but that does not sound right. My supplier and all the other ones I know of ship 6 days a week so replacements are sent same day as the complaint. I would be feeding 1/4" crix more than likely. To check for size, make sure the cricket can fit in the space between their eyes. If they are eating pellets or salad dusted with t-rex vgf, then running out of crix for a week or more is not a problem. they need protien and both the t-rex and rep-cal have plenty.

If you want easy to breed bugs I recomend roaches. they are hearty and once you have an established colony, supply is not a problem for just a few BDs. They digest easier than worms or crix. There is a roach forum here you can check out as well. I recomend Death Heads. If you have any questions give me a shout.

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Bennett

Home Of The Florida Orange
www.beardiedragon.com

I would recommend roaches. If you would have asked me a couple years ago whether or not I would ever allow roaches in my house (whether considered pests or not) I would have answered absultely NOT! But I took a daring step last year when the insect bills were getting outrageous. I learned as much as I could about roaches and finally ordered some (lobster roaches). A year later I now have 4 different species! My dragons love them and they are so much easier to care for then any other insect I have had (crickets, superworms, waxworms).

The species I have are:
Lobster Roaches (Nauphoeta Cinerea)
Madagascar Hissing Roaches (Gromphadorhina Portentosa)
6 Spot Roaches (Eublaberus Distanti)
Dubias (Blaptica Dubia)

There are pros and cons to each roach species. Which is one of the reasons I have decided to have several species. The other reason is for variety. In my opinion variety in diet is very important and often overlooked as part of reptiles care.

Basically though to sum things up lobsters are FAST producers and can easily keep up with many reptiles and larger reptiles. They are also a softer bodied roach and easily digested. There max size is about 1 1/4"- 1 1/2" so the adults can be fed off as well. However they are FAST and CAN climb smooth surfaces. Care must be taken during feeding time to prevent escapes. The hissers are just interesting in my opinion. They are one of the species I bought because I wanted variety and not to mention they can be interesting to observe. The con to them I would have to say is that their adult size seems to be a little too large for most bearded dragons. The 6 spots and dubias I bought because I was told they are among the quickest producing of the non climbing species and less spastic (calmer). The only con to them that I have noticed is that they seem to be taking a little longer to reach maturity (adulthood) then I would like. The lobsters I have had the longest and feel I am very aware of all their pros and cons. The other 3 species I have just recently acquired and I am still learning about them and still forming opinions on them.

Here are a few pics.

This is one of my lobster roach bins. It is a 95 quart rubbermaid container. This was when the bins werent so populated. Now each lobster bin has thousands and thousands of lobsters. I have to sell some occasionally to make room in the bins so they arent too crowded.

This is basically how I ventilate each rubbermaid. I have 7 (95 quart) rubbermaids at this time

These are madagascar hissing roaches. They are still nymphs as you can see by their small size.

These ones are Eublaberus Distanti adults or 6 spot roaches. The nymphs look very different. They are dark in color w/ 6 small yellowish spots on their sides and no wings.

I cant find a good picture of the dubias. I will try and take one later for you! Well goodluck with your choice. Take care, Lindsay

If I put them in thier enclosure they are sure to get out the vent holes and maybe infest the house.The enclosure has some vent holes about 2 inches up the side from the bottem.My bds will not eat in a seperate container. They just sit there and look but will only eat in thier cage..This could be a problem...I was seriously thinking about the lobster roaches they are much cheaper and I cant find anyone with deathheads at a reasonable price.the sites I went to were all sold out of lobsters or didnt carry deathheads.

Lobsters are very fast, good climbers and escape artists. Once you throw one in the cage, if it is not eaten, its hard to retrieve unless they are adults or close to it. anything younger than an adult is rather small too. If you cant find death heads there are others similar like orange and spotted. If you have to, next choice is hissers. They are slow and easy to catch. feed one at a time and what does not get snagged up right away can be taken out of the cage and used later.

BTW, did you call richie the roachman? getting a dozen can be expensive, see how many it takes to get a price break. He does run sales every so often when he is overstocked.

Link

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Bennett

Home Of The Florida Orange
www.beardiedragon.com

I feed my dragons 1-2 lobsters at a time in a ceramic type bowl. Its only about 1 3/4" high and my dragons have no problem running to the bowl and eating out of it. Occasionally a lobster escapes from the bowl (usually nymphs) and I have to chase it around the dragons enclosure.

Dan Haas has summed up the different techniques to use when feeding lobster roaches to reptiles. Directly from his website www.crunchy-critters.com

There are 5 ways to feed this type of roach to lizards or other animals that we have come up with. Perhaps you can find another.

1. Smear a very small amount of vegetable oil, olive oil or any other type of cooking oil work well (we have also found recently that lard or even cooking grease such as Crisco work very well and is very inexpensive) around upper most edge of glass tank.
2. Use a glass or plastic bowl with a thin smear of oil around rim to contain them and your pet can just pick them out of the bowl as it chooses. This method works very well for chameleons.
3. Use a separate feeding container with a smear of oil around edge. I use a descent size Rubbermaid tub and put a large amount of roaches in it. Them remove my lizards from their cages and place all of them in the tub and let them eat as much as they like and then return them to the cage.
4. Pre-freeze and defrost and serve as necessary. Simply let them defrost at room temp and serve in a shallow dish. Many monitor lizard species are scavengers by nature so this comes very natural to them. This is far better than feeding many commercially available feeder insects in a can that are dehydrated. You can keep them in the freezer for many weeks without them getting any freezer burn. (this is our latest preferred method for feeding my Bearded Dragons)
5. If you have a slow moving reptile you may want to cool these critters in the fridge or freezer to slow them down a bit. The cooler Lobster Roaches are the slower they move. If your using the freezer for a quick cool down, just make sure you check in on them every once in a while so you don't freeze them accidentally.

Remember this is copy and pasted from Dan Haas site @ www.crunchy-critters.com I am not trying to steal anyones work

Also another method I have used is to feed lobsters on supplement day. Dusting the lobsters w/ calcium or herptivite does slow them down.

Alot of us are sold out of lobsters! There has been a HIGH demand for them lately. I had an ad up a month ago and ran out in less then a week. The last couple weeks I have been getting e-mails out of no where asking if I still have some available and unfortunately I sold and traded all I needed to sell. Like beardiedragon said though there are other species you could consider but I have a feeling many are going to be sold out of them too. If you hold out another month or two I guarantee there will be a roach boom and lots of people selling them. As a matter of fact I need to do some bin shifting with mine and see just how many I have. During feeding time last night I noticed the bins are almost full again, so almost time to sell some again!