Roaches, crickets, worms and confusion, oh my

[Aanayab1]

Okay so, I am guessing I will need to order my starter colonies soon. I will be getting four, 4-5 week old ackies in about a week or two. Now my questions are;

A) how soon should I get them before my group arrives?

B) how large should the starter colonies be?

C) what types of insects other than the roach and crickets should I get?

Antonio

[Gatorhunter1231]

Get some dubia from Aaron Pauling roaches. He has a good starter kit to cover all sizes and you get more then he advertises. Crickets suck to breed and just stink. Mealworms and superworms have turn into a beetle before breeding. The beetle is not normally on a monitors yum yum list so you'll have adults and not much of a way to get rid of them. I would get a roach colony and order crickets from a good supplier or from your petstore. Just feed the crickets before feeding them to your monitors. You can get a ton of superworms also by mail. I tried phonix worms once but my ackies or tristis didn't really care for those.

[Gatorhunter1231]

A) asap-takes a month or two for roaches to establish in their and breed like crazy.
B) Aaron Paulings starter colony has 30 adults, 300 mediums, and 500 smalls I think for $89'shipped. That should get u on the right track. He overcounts and seems to twice as many.
C)you can feed the occasionally mealworms/superworms. Just don't bother with breeding them.

[infernalis]

will Ackies take earthworms?

[Pirarucu]

Originally Posted by infernalis

will Ackies take earthworms?

I don't see why they wouldn't. I'd just offer a wide variety, they'll probably eat most of the things you can offer..

[Gungirl]

Question.. Isn't it best to keep Ackies in a trio? I was always told 3 was the best group size to keep them in to avoid issues.

[Lankyrob]

When we had our Ackie we had a colony or Dubia roaches which were his staple diet and we would then give him Locusts or Crickets on a semi regular basis for a change.

[Gatorhunter1231]

Worms could be a hit and miss. Always try it out.
You buy trios in hopes of getting a pair. If you get two female and a male then that's called the jackpot lol.

[Aanayab1]

Ok I'll order soon as I'm off work tonight some roaches, is dubia the only kind they will eat or just the best for them? Just wondering if I should maybe do two types of roach colony. I have pretty easy access to night crawler worms I could try as well, they breed super easy. Yea I'm getting four in hopes to end up with a 1.2 trio or two 1.1 pairs.

[Lankyrob]

Dubia are just really easy to breed, dont fly, cant climb a plastic sided tub

[Aanayab1]

On that aaron Pauling site he has got 11 different species of roach that don't do any of that either. That's where my question is based from.

[varanus_mad]

Id buy the biggest roach colony you can afford and leave it alone for 3 months then start feeding off it.

[Gregg M]

In my experience, ackies are not big on worms. Feed lots of crickets, roaches (I like Turkistans Blatta lateralis because they do not burrow and breed twice as fast as dubia) and do not forget pinks. If the ackies are too small to eat whole pinks, cut them up into bits it can swallow.

[infernalis]

That's what I figured Gregg, not going to be any worms up in the rocks of the red heart.

[Aanayab1]

I can not remember off the top of my head but in one of the Biawak quarterlys it says that in one of the studies involving 100+ Ackies beetles,locusts, roaches, small lizards are their main diet... Any thoughts on that?