# Sustainable lobster roach colony for a leopard gecko.



## Hedgewitch (Feb 12, 2008)

Right, I did a few searches and failed to turn up what I was looking for so I'm going to start a thread here.

A friend of mine wants to start a lobster roaches for his leopard gecko (just one, sub-adult, fed about 4 medium-large crickets every two days currently) but we're not sure what size would be a sustainable colony size. 

So yeah, what kind of sized lobster roach colony would be needed to allow for a removal of about 12-13 adult/sub-adult per week? Is there some sort of formula to work that out or some rule of thumb?

Thanks, 
Toby.

_Edit: He hand feeds, so the climbing isn't a problem and he doesn't want dubias... expensive and slower to breed._


----------



## Gemstone Dragons (Jul 29, 2009)

Has he looked at Turks?

Their the fastest to breed and adults are only 2-3cm max so ideal for feeding reps without worrying about seperating sizes.


----------



## Hedgewitch (Feb 12, 2008)

He had feeds and turkistans are mega-fast at running as well as breeding.


----------



## Gemstone Dragons (Jul 29, 2009)

i shake out 1 egg carton into a cricket keeper container without the lid and feed mine from there into their vivs with a crix tub, it would be no diff doing this then picking up with tweezers for him which i do occasionally for my cresties.


----------



## toad650 (Feb 9, 2009)

depending on the size of colony he starts with really, but as lobsters are quite quick at reproducing it shouldn't take too long to get the numbers up. 12 or so a week prob won't make much of a dent in a small-med size colony so poss a few hundred would be a good start.

I would of thought adult lobsters might be a bit big so you'd be feeding of med-large one's so the colony will keep growing anyway as you won't be feeding off breeding adult.


----------



## Hedgewitch (Feb 12, 2008)

toad650 said:


> depending on the size of colony he starts with really, but as lobsters are quite quick at reproducing it shouldn't take too long to get the numbers up. 12 or so a week prob won't make much of a dent in a small-med size colony so poss a few hundred would be a good start.
> 
> I would of thought adult lobsters might be a bit big so you'd be feeding of med-large one's so the colony will keep growing anyway as you won't be feeding off breeding adult.


Thank you. I'm helping him with this (partly because I plan on stealing some for my tarantulas) and so I'll start with maybe 200. Not too expensive, and if it's not holding up then he can always add to the colony and boost the numbers.


----------

