# How many roaches to start a colony?



## davet90 (Sep 30, 2014)

Hey everyone I'm on the process of starting a roach colony. I've set the box up fine but I'm not sure I've got enough roaches. I've bought 4 adults (3:1 female to male) and 35 medium sized roaches (that I were planning to feed off straight away but I think I'll leave them to grow and breed).

I've seen some posts that day people are starting with 100 adults and taking 6 months to achieve a sustainable colony but are these likely to be from people with a massive collection of animals to feed? I'm just looking to have enough to feed a single beardie with the possible addition of another lizard (likely a leopard gecko) around July time.


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## Beardy Boy97 (Dec 13, 2011)

You will need a lot more than you currently have to start of a good breeding colony. I have many colonies going and have just started two new ones. One of them I ordered 300 adult roaches to start the colony of and another I ordered over 600 roaches. This means that I will be able to fed a few off straight away, but the rest will just be left to breed, even so they will take a couple of months to establish.


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## CloudForest (Nov 27, 2013)

if you keep them warm (26C, some use a heat mat to keep one side warm and increase breeding early on, mine never had heat as the reptile room is heated), feed them a good diet of oats/bran and veg, you should have plenty within 3 months to start feeding off, within 6 months you wont know what to do with the rest  ....don't be tempted to feed on dog/cat biscuits to increase breeding, you end up with uric acid filled roaches = gout in reptiles.

if you have n animal that will eat dead insects, freeze some each month, just incase you get a colony die off (happens occasionally) and then you'll have a long supply of food

I started off with 100 nymphs, 2 years ago...I have thousands (2 x 96L boxes full lol) now, far more than I could ever use, and so it seems does everyone else, coz they are impossible to sell now lol


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## johne.ev (Sep 14, 2008)

I started my colony off last year with a single tub of mediam sized roaches from livefoods direct. I have hundreds now, but admit i never feed off the adults as nothing i keep is big enough to eat them at that size.
Definitely do better at higher temps. I keep mine in an old fish tank (no lid) on a heat mat. Before the winter i kept them at room temps & they bred much slower.

And yeah agree with cloudforest, i couldn't give em away at one time. Whereas a few years back, i was selling loads.


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## davet90 (Sep 30, 2014)

That sounds good haha. I'm not looking to sell any I just want to be able to sustain the animal I have and any I may get in the future. I chose roaches because they're quiet, they don't stink and they can't climb so I'm not going to find any under a log or in hides when I clean the big out. If I have enough to feed what I have then I'm happy. My dragons currently chewing through a tub of locusts a day so it might be some time before I have enough haha. Should save me some money though because I always have oats and salad in so the only extra expense is the heat mat


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## davet90 (Sep 30, 2014)

Right so I decided to add to this to hopefully speed things up. I've added 25 adults, the ratio of males to females in this isn't ideal as I just added a pack of xl dubias to my cart from Ricks livefoods but there is a decent number of females in there. I also added 50 sub adults so I should get a good amount from them. 

I'll be looking at upgrading the container they're in soon as they're just in an exo terra faunarium (same size as large cricket pen) the only place we have room for a rub is the drying cupboard so it might take some convincing of the Mrs but the only thing we keep in there is my JiuJitsu kit so I might stick a big colony in and see how long it takes for her to notice


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## CloudForest (Nov 27, 2013)

davet90 said:


> Right so I decided to add to this to hopefully speed things up. I've added 25 adults, the ratio of males to females in this isn't ideal as I just added a pack of xl dubias to my cart from Ricks livefoods but there is a decent number of females in there. I also added 50 sub adults so I should get a good amount from them.
> 
> I'll be looking at upgrading the container they're in soon as they're just in an exo terra faunarium (same size as large cricket pen) the only place we have room for a rub is the drying cupboard so it might take some convincing of the Mrs but the only thing we keep in there is my JiuJitsu kit so I might stick a big colony in and see how long it takes for her to notice


if the male:female ratio isn't ideal, then get a bigger tub ASAP, that is the one thing which will slow things down...tbh I don't even bother about the ratio anymore, I feed off as many males as possible, but I've never found it to be an issue, except when the colony is to large for the container, then competition between males increases


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## johne.ev (Sep 14, 2008)

davet90 said:


> I'll be looking at upgrading the container they're in soon as they're just in an exo terra faunarium (same size as large cricket pen) the only place we have room for a rub is the drying cupboard so it might take some convincing of the Mrs but the only thing we keep in there is my JiuJitsu kit so I might stick a big colony in and see how long it takes for her to notice


Ha ha!! Good luck if your mrs is anything like mine. :whistling2:
My wife went mental a few weeks back, when she found a tub of small locust in her (i say "her" literally :lol2 airing cupboard.
Ended up having a proper row... which she won of course :lol2:


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## davet90 (Sep 30, 2014)

Right so I've upgraded them to an 80litre tub which I'm managing to keep at about 33C. I've also added 25 females so I've now got a lot more females than males. 

My last question is does anyone know any good places to get egg trays? Everywhere I've found online so far the postage is as expensive as the product.

The only thing I can think of is to pop down to my local farm shop and see if they'll sell me the egg trays without the eggs.


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## davet90 (Sep 30, 2014)

Spotted this coming out of the rear of one of my females any ideas what it is?


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## Athravan (Dec 28, 2006)

I'm on my mobile so I can't see pictures very well but it looks like she's laying or has just laid an ootheca (eggsac). She will push an eggsac out, and then pull it back in to a special chamber to incubate the babies, and then push it back the babies out again as they hatch.

As for where to get the egg cartons you could try asking around any local reptile shops because we throw absolutely tons of the things out for recycling every week - any shop that gets bulk livefood in will have way more egg crates than they need.


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## davet90 (Sep 30, 2014)

That's good I was hoping it'd be that but I couldn't tell. I'm glad the first lot of eggs are there though. Thanks for the response


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## davet90 (Sep 30, 2014)

Hey everyone just to update on this my RUB is absolutely teeming with tiny little nymphs right now. 

I just have a feeding question. I've read that they do well in grains but I have been feeding mine entirely in veg and salad. They get all of the scraps from the chopping board plus whatever's left of the greens after I've made my dragons salad. Will this be alright or should I switch to a more grain centred diet?


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## DazWynne (Feb 28, 2015)

Hey I'm thinking of starting a Dubai colony to feed my Beardie, how long did it take before you started feeding out of the colony? Do you keep a heat mat on them all the time? Cheers


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## Corfel (Apr 29, 2013)

I got a bunch of egg crates on ebay a while back, wasn't too expensive

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/EGG-TRAYS...449?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item1e9e462aa9

Didn't exactly look for long so you might find cheaper ones still


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## popitgoes (Oct 24, 2010)

go to a butchers that sells eggs they sometimes have some going and will give you them for free


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## davet90 (Sep 30, 2014)

Hi everyone. Just thought I'd post an update with a few pics. 

 

This one is a shot of one side of one of the cardboard trays. All of the medium and large roaches i bought seem to have grown into adults quite nicely. 



This one is a shot of how I have it set up I always make sure that they have water crystals and an oat/bran mix. I also buy a few bags of rocket a week which that get half of (though that never lasts long) and I'll also throw in scraps from the chopping board. 


DazWynne said:


> Hey I'm thinking of starting a Dubai colony to feed my Beardie, how long did it take before you started feeding out of the colony? Do you keep a heat mat on them all the time? Cheers


I haven't really started to feed them off yet other than 2 times I was out of bugs and couldn't be bothered making a trip to the shop. I think that once I let the first generation get to adulthood (I'd say they're about halfway there at the moment) I should be able to start feeding them off. I kept a heat mat on all the time when it was cold as my flat is pretty cold but I've turned it off the last few weeks since its been warm as it's about 28C in there with it off. 

Sent from my SM-G925F using Tapatalk


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## chase2200 (Jul 30, 2016)

*Red runner roaches*

Hello just read this thread and saw that some members were struggling with high red runner numbers. I am looking to start my own colony so if you need to get rid of some please let me know. :2thumb:


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## PeterUK (Jun 21, 2008)

davet90 said:


> Spotted this coming out of the rear of one of my females any ideas what it is?
> 
> http://i1296.photobucket.com/albums...A-96CE-4318-BE42-592C47A71FDC_zpsbqq93t0h.jpg


That is the ootheca where the young roaches are developing. The female can push the ootheca in or out of her body to regulate the temperature that is best for the developing young


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## _juju (Mar 15, 2021)

davet90 said:


> Hey everyone I'm on the process of starting a roach colony. I've set the box up fine but I'm not sure I've got enough roaches. I've bought 4 adults (3:1 female to male) and 35 medium sized roaches (that I were planning to feed off straight away but I think I'll leave them to grow and breed).
> 
> I've seen some posts that day people are starting with 100 adults and taking 6 months to achieve a sustainable colony but are these likely to be from people with a massive collection of animals to feed? I'm just looking to have enough to feed a single beardie with the possible addition of another lizard (likely a leopard gecko) around July time.
> Hey, Ik its been 6 years since you started your colony but how is it doing? are they still thriving? are you using a heat mat and what do you feed them?


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