Blaptica dubia breeding

    Hello back,


    I´m struggling a little bit with the breeding of dubias. I´ve had a bunch of adults for some months but they are not breeding. I don´t know so much about them but I guess that´s not very usual. They are always in a dark place and I clean their box usually. I guess they are well fed as well, so, what may be the problem ? do them require specific conditions for mating ?


    I have to say that in last weeks, I found dead 2 of them. However, I don´t know if they died due to my fault or it was cannibalism.


    thanks,


    best regards.

    Hi,

    Blabtica dubia are pretty easy, if they have a bit of ground to burrow and a Temperature above 22° (and below 28°) they usually do fine.

    Maybe provide a bit more protein (like dog-treats or fish-flakes)


    Greetings Simon :P

    Mantiden sind doch auch nur missgebildete Schaben.

    :twisted:

    Die Kultur von Honigbienen ist kein Naturschutz.

    Oh, I don´t have ground for them. I only have paper as floor, so when I remove it, I clean off most of the dirt at the same time. I´ll try to give them some substrate for them to feel more comfortable.


    Do you reccomend keeping the egg kartons If I add some ground, or the ground should do the function that the karton is meant to do ?


    Best regards.

    Hi,


    they don't need the cartons tbh, they're likely to get moldy if your roaches bury them (and also the roaches probably will eat them).

    If you want them to have some structure inside the soil put some wood chunks in it, some with white rot preferably as the roaches can eat this, if there's no wood with white rot available just make sure it's dry and don't bleeds resin anymore. We sometimes give our roaches nearly-empty glasses of babyfood to clean up, they like to bury them and hide in them as well.


    -Kraehe

    To be honest, that sounds much cleaner than what I´ve seen in any tutorial. The only reason why I was using karton was to provide some hiding points to avoid cannibalism, but I guess the ground will be enough for that ( or maybe not ? )


    I´ll add the ground and offer them some fish dried food to make their diet more diverse.


    Best regards.

    Hi,


    they certainly need hiding spots but they're not as cannibalistic as other insects. As long as you provide them some additional protein food you should be good. The ground is usually enough space to hide and dig around for them. If you fill it in some cm height they literally can move in every direction within the soil and can avoid others better than on any egg carton.


    A little tip for feeding fish food: Fish food of any kind, no matter if flakes or sticks, tends to get moldy really fast and also attract mites once it's wet - you don't want that. If you offer fish flakes I recommend you put them on a little dish of sorts at first (I use a cleaned seashell) to avoid them getting wet too soon and also put very little in once at a time. If the roaches don't eat the fish food and it starts molding you can take them out with no problem this way. As soon as you have a feeling for how much they eat within a timespan of around an hour you can also put the flakes in without a dish.


    Males still *will* bite each others atennae and wings, sometimes the legs too. If you see this happen it has nothing to do with them being malnourished! It's more usual that there are to many males (or to less females) in your colony. If you remove one or two males or put some more females in, they usually stop fighting.


    Our roaches are crazy for mushrooms and lichen btw ;)


    -Kraehe

    Hello Kraehe !


    That was a highly complete tip hehehe. I´ll use a short top of any bottle or a small dish for it to not propagate over the substrate and check how good do they eat it. I´ve seen fodder for roaches in some online stores. I´ll try it, but it looks pretty similar to just fish food xd. Kerf has beautiful offering but it seems they don´t ship outside Germany ;(.


    I´ll keep it updated to check how did it work.


    Thank you,


    best regards.