# Starting Dubai roach colony Price?



## JoeSmart (Jul 15, 2013)

Hi RFUK,
After reading quite a bit about roaches as far as I can understand its fairly cheap but how much am I looking at all in? I don't want a massive colony to start as I only have 1 Bearded Dragon so its just him to feed but I'm hoping to get a Leopard Gecko early next year providing I'm comfortable doing so.

While here on opinion is it worth starting a colony for 1 Beardy or just keep buying crickets ect?

Thanks
Joe.


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## tropicaljoey (Feb 27, 2013)

i have a colony of dubias, i bought 50 for £15 then i bought a £8 tub, £2 bug gell, £2 bug grub, £18 heatmat and a £3.60 thermometer. free egg crates from my house. costed me around 48/50 quid  that has give me a small colony that i have not yet started to feed off because im still waiting for the colony to grow a little bit bigger  i have now started breeding crickets as well for a varied diet for my 1 beardie :2thumb:


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## JoeSmart (Jul 15, 2013)

Awesome, thanks for the reply. Gives me an idea of what price I'm looking at


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## tremerz97 (Nov 30, 2012)

I paid £20 for a starter colony. then a rub (£10er or so) heatmat which I already had then egg crates  so around £30 I paid


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## Shaunny (May 31, 2013)

depends on what you want to do really. the best way is to have a large heat mat and wrap it around the tub which costs more plus you should have it on a stat which will cost but save you money in the long run.

get them from Dubia Cockroaches i just topped my colony up which cost me £19.50 for 240 roaches (all adults with about 10-1 ratio females-males). i have 2 beardys that love them and started off with a small colony of about 80 adult and various size nymphs but the way i see it is they take a while too start breeding from stress, then they breed, wait for babies, babies will take nearly 3 months too grow too full adults. it will take you roughly 6-8months before you can feed off so the bigger you can make the colony the better really else you will start feeding off more than you can produce. i have local pet shops that will be taking some from me if i do produce more than they can eat but what you can do is just feed off the smaller half sizes roaches which means you will be feeding more of that sizes keeping the numbers under control.


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## Shaunny (May 31, 2013)

i know people do it easy but....

another thing i can see after doing it is that if you keep them all in the same tub then you have too disturb the adults a lot more often to get the feeders out so you may want too invest in 2 tubs with 2 heat mats. that way after every 1-2 months that you clean them out you will separate the nymphs from adults and cause less stress and limit the chance of slowing the breeding down which it will if disturbed too much.


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## CarlW21 (Jul 21, 2013)

Any instructional videos on this subject ?


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## Shaunny (May 31, 2013)

search the ROACH HUT on youtube he i really good and the vids are spot on


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