Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I would like to know what would be one of the better types of roaches I could feed Koopa, that would breed easly, so that I could start a colony, so I wouldnt have to buy any more crickets. Dropping $10 to $30 buck a week on crickets is killing my budget. Oh, also, they cant have a horrable smell to them, something I could bare in my small apartment.

Thank for any help in advance, and there still has not been a responce to my beardie with an attitude problem and how to fix it. If someone could help me out a little, that would be very apprecited.

TY
-Joe
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Father of:

1 Bearded Dragon (with an attitude)
1 Chinese Water Dragon
1 Spotted Gecko
1 Golden Gecko

I would go with Blaptica dubia. Although a little more expensive than B. discoids or E. prosticus they are virtually odorless and so easy to keep. As I tell anyone getting into roaches you have to be patient. Your not starting with adult crickets that can lay eggs right away. You are most likely only going to find small nymphs that will take a few months to raise up to producing adults. Once they reach adults each female will produce for 1-2 years or so. Dubia are very easy to sex as adult males get wings and females do not. A 1.4 ratio is good so excess males can be fed off. These guys have pretty soft exo-skeletons and can be fed to all the animals you mentioned. I have species, care and handling info under the help and support section of my website. Roaches aren't cheap, but with very little care (I can speak from 15 years of experience that roaches are the easiest feeder I have ever kept) you will be able to rid yourself of crickets and be providing a much better feeder to your pets. I recommend most people to start with 50-100 unless you have lots of animals then even more.
James
www.blaberus.com

P.S. I am working with a couple small non-climbers that are the size of lobsters. It will be a few more months before they are ready.

Wow man, thanks! That just answered a ton of questions that I could not find an easy answer to, even online. Just what you said there, made me want to just get some of those nasty looking roaches. And are you SURE you can feed these roches to both my chinese water dragon, my bearded dragon, and my 2 geckos? If so, why the heck dont more people do this?

Thank you again!

-Joe
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Father of:

1 Bearded Dragon (with an attitude)
1 Chinese Water Dragon
1 Spotted Gecko
1 Golden Gecko

The first reason is roaches are still very new to the reptile community. I was mainly selling them on the invert side before all my gecko freinds started buying them and now everyone is. Second, people still have the fear factor to get over. I'll admit even me the guy with 20,000 roaches couldn't hold them right away, but what I've learned is how harmless and easy to handle they are. Lastly they still are very expensive. I'm building a huge new facility to increase production, plus breed new food items like katydids and firebrats. With 4,000 species of roaches worldwide and 350 million years behind them they have been food for every insect eating reptile on the planet. I saw a huge difference in my reptiles once they started eating roaches and haven't looked back. Wait till some of the new species I'm working with come out(lots of cool ones not even shown on my site). More people are joining the roach club everyday and in a couple of years they may pass crickets as the most common feeder bug. Also, picky feeders go nuts for roaches and any babies I've produced have started eating them right away. Your animals will act like kids in a candy store. The last thing I would say is most people's first roach is lobsters. Although lobsters are a great feeder roach there climbing capabilities can make it hard for some to feed them and clean there enclosures. There are a lot of tips I have that I will put in my individual caresheets I'm working on, but I still advocate non-climbers for most people. If you plan on keeping reptiles for years to come than waiting a few months for a colony to get going isn't that long.
James
www.blaberus.com

I dont mind the wait, I just dont know what all goes into careing for roaches. I mean, I dont know how much time and effort I have to put into it. As is, I can hardly keep up with my dragons through out the day. I dont know how much more effort there is to keeping a colony of roaches.

Anyways, I can see that you have a total love for reptiles, and I admire the work you put into helping people that have questions about something about this. Thank you. Already, you have helped me. You have just made yourself a new client. No more crickets for koopa anymore, roaches are it.

Thank you again,
-Joe
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Father of:

1 Bearded Dragon (with an attitude)
1 Chinese Water Dragon
1 Spotted Gecko
1 Golden Gecko

I spend no more than 15 min a day to keep 20,000 plus roaches. Typically on fruit days I washed the fruits and veggies, chopped them up real quick and just toss food into my 20 bins. Some days its just a quick mist or some water bites. Usually I tool around with the newer colonies to see if I have babies yet. The only real time is cleaning. Most people should only have to clean a roach bin once every 3-6 months and I know people that go a year and there is no smell(can't say that about crickets, your lucky to get a week). I clean mine much more often because I seperate out the nymphs to feed off and sell, but the average person could spend a couple minutes a day on there colony with three or four 30-60 min cleaning sessions a year. Very very easy. Hopefully I'll have some more updates for the site this weekend.
James
www.blaberus.com

One of my baby Nephrurus Amyae eating a dubia.

>>One of my baby Nephrurus Amyae eating a dubia.
>>

Question about that pic: what's the reptile classified as?

Any info on them would be great.
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2 Mali Uromastyx-Ares & Apollo
2 Bearded Dragons- Draco & Hades
0.1.1 Leopard Gecko's-Kalypso & Phoenix
1 Tokay Gecko-Sid Vicious
1 Tarantula-Peter Parker
1 Amazon Red Head Parrot-Pancho
1 African Gray Parrot-Keya
1 Dog-Cheeka
1 Zebra Finch-Beeps

Nephrurus are a small group of geckos found in Austriala. There are two versions the rough and the smooth. Amyae, Asper, Wheeleri, Sheai are all roughs. The amyae are really hard to find for sale. Recently I posted a few females for sale ($1,800 each) and had 10 emails in five minutes and they where gone. Babies are around $600 each but almost anyone breeing them raises them to a sexable size ($2,300 pair) before selling them. I have two pairs of wheeleri which are even harder to get and around $6,000 a pair. Eggs are incubating!!!! The asper are $9,000 a pair a pretty much impossible to get in the U.S., and the sheai can't be found anywhere but books. On the smooth side you have the most common knobtail Nephrurus levis levis which can be found pretty easy. Others are Nephrurus pilbarensis($1,500 pr also some albino's and hypo's in this species), occidentalis ($1,200 pr), deleani($5,000 a pair), laevissimus ($4,000 pair), stallatus ($4,000 a pair) and vertabralis (impossible to get).
They are a fun gecko and just another in my long past of breeding austrialan animals.
James

Cool little guys! What is there captive care like, are they difficult?
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0.1 Bearded dragon
0.1 mexican kingsnake
1.0.2 Leopard Gecko's
0.0.1 Rose Hair Tarantula
1.0 BTS
0.0.1 Reverse Okeetee Corn
0.1 Bullmastiff
4.1 Cats

Very easy. Keep them in a shoebox rack with a hide box on the hot and a hide box on the cool with 1/2" or so of sand. Some of the smooth species require more sand and moisture, but the roughs are outback animals and don't need a lot of water.
James
www.blaberus.com

Some baby frilleds!!

baby frilleds. Love aussie animals.