Breeding dubia roaches can be tricky and requires proper care. Once you have a proper house, warm environment, and feed your dubia roaches correctly, they will breed on their own. However, to ensure proper breeding, your colony should have both adult males and females. Buying them from an experienced breeder will save you time and offer the best diet for your pet.
Dubia roaches are sexually dimorphic. Hence, it is easy for you to recognize males and females. The males possess complete wings (which do not permit them to fly), whereas the females possess only wing stubs. Here’s everything you want to know about their breeding.
At What Rate Do Dubia Roaches Breed?
Once dubia roaches breed at their maximum rate, they will reproduce quite quickly, and it is what makes them a perfect food source. Newly born Dubias are known as nymphs. These nymphs start reproducing in 3 months, and they reach full adulthood in 4-5 months.
Talking about dubia roach lifespan, males live nearly nine months to a year, and female roaches live around eighteen months to two years.
Keep More Females than Males in Your Dubia Roach Colony
Since a single male dubia roach can fertilize manifold females, your breeding roach colony should have more females than males. You can accomplish it by first feeding the adult males to your pets.
Similarly, female roaches are mature and ready to breed once they are 3-4 months old. Female dubia roaches will produce nearly 30 nymphs every two months or so. It happens during their active breeding life.
Nymphs possess soft bodies and shed quite often as they grow to adult size and mature hard shells. If you want to manage your breeding roach colony in the best manner, you should maintain a ratio of about one male to five females. Make sure that you keep the temperatures at 90-95F and keep track of the hatching rate when considering breeding dubia roaches.
Finally, if the rate drops significantly and husbandry remains right, most female roaches may be older and produce less young. In such an instance, make sure that you allow more females to mature and reproduce.
How Many Pets Are You Feeding?
If you are feeding a huge number of pets, and you want to optimize reproductive levels, you may need to set up three housing containers. Here, one container you can use for nymphs, one for reproductive age medium-sized Dubious, and finally, one container for older non-reproducing roaches.
What If Dubias Are Not Breeding?
In case your dubia roaches are not breeding, there can be a few things you can do. First, you need to wait and stay patient as your females will lay nymphs only every two months or so.
Similarly, even if everything is going as it should be, you may not see any nymphs getting laid till you have had your dubia roach colony for six weeks or more.
Furthermore, you must ensure that you fulfill all of the mentioned conditions. Mainly, ensure that your dubia colony is sufficiently warm and wet enough because these insects will not breed if they do not live in suitable conditions. Moreover, if you have set up your colony right, ensure that your roaches get sufficient food and stay warm.