Feeders for insectivores

[Nafun]

Stopped in at the PetSmart last night, after picking up some more aquariums from craigslist (55g+40g w/ stands for $50) because the wife wanted to look for fancy mice (trying to increase the genetic diversity of our mouse colony since REWs are so inbred most of them are infertile).

She kept pointing out snakes and asking me if I wanted them, and I kept saying "No, no more snakes. I am good on snakes. No more snakes until I decide to breed.". Then she hit the lizards, and she fell in love. One beardie in the beardie tank kept following her with his gaze. So... now we have a bearded dragon sitting in the living room.

Anyway, my knowledge of beardies was a little shy, and I wasn't prepared for exactly how ravenous these little bastards were. As soon as I got him situated in his new home, I decided to offer him food. I didn't think he'd eat, but figured it was worth a try. He gobbled down at least a dozen mealworms, and he's only about 3 inches long snout to vent. I don't know where he put them all.

My adult water dragon noms 30-50 crickets per week. My turtles enjoy one or two crickets a day between the 5 of them. And my tegu will eat a few insects per day with his meat. All this is easily sustainable, but now I'm reading in another thread on this forum that beardies will eat 80-100 crickets per day?

That's a lot of crickets.

I tried breeding crickets when I got my water dragon, it failed. They stunk, they escaped, they chirped, and ultimtely, they all died. All I can think is that the reptile room got too hot for them.

So.... I'm left with one option really. Roaches. I keep hearing that dubias are easy to breed, don't climb, don't fly, don't smell, etc. Unfortunately, they're still roaches.

How do I set up roach colonies? How many colonies am I going to need to sustain two insectivores and one ravenous eating machine? How long after starting the colonies can I expect them to be able to keep up with demand? Where the heck do I get convoluted cardboard (egg crate)?

[infernalis]

One decent colony will make a lot of Roaches, I use a 30+ quart poly tote, and never had one escape into my house.

they are so easy to do, it's a no brainer for feeders, nearly free food, and NO trips to keep buying crickets and meal worms.

They work for our little Leo and Chomper too.

[Grimleo]

I mentioned this in the other forum but you can get allll the info you need at Beardeddragon.org

As for the dubias, they need absolutely no light to be perfectly happy. So a small dark colored plastic tub would be perfect. They need good heating. They have been known to breed at 70 ish temps but it goes VERY slow. They like it at around 85 or 95 at most, which is easy to attain with an under tank heater under the tub or even a little human heating pad. They need high humidity or else they have trouble with their molting, but all I use is a little deli cup with little holes poked in the top and about half of it filled with water. Put this in the tank over the heating pad and it should work fine.

One colony is good for one beardie, but unless you start off big(with about 50+ females and 20+ males[males to female ratio should be 1:4 at least]) you're not going to see your colony booming right off the bat. They do need time to settle, too. Once they settle and start mating, the female(if it's her first time being gravid) will tank about a month to two months to give birth to herfirst babies, which is usually around 20-40 babies. Every month or so after that she should be pumping out the babies, lol.

Thought I'd mention that beardies can almost never digest the hard shell that surrounds mealworm bodies, some times even as adults(IME). They do well with superworms when they are 16 inches long from snout to tail tip or longer. Never mealworms.

Also, they do eat upwards of about 60-80+ if they are happy and healthy as can be. By the way, you got lucky because many beardies go through relocation stress and hardly eat AT ALL for the first week to two weeks. My smallest beardie didn't eat as well as she should for 3 weeks - almost a month. O_O