Here is a short video of my Bearded Dragons wolfing down some Blaptica dubia (Guyanan Orange Spotted Roaches). Bear with it, the quality gets better after 15 seconds or so. They are working on the third share that I gave them within about a 10 minute time span. As you can see they go for them with gusto - no mustard, ketchup or relish required.
Blaptica dubia are supposed to be one of the more nutritional feeder insect species available on the commercial pet food market. They are easy to keep and fairly easy to breed. I just received a shipment of 1,000 of them today. My previous purchase was made back in late February, also a thousand lot. As you can see, even though I fed them to my beardies, Crested Geckos, Mossy Gecko and water turtles, they lasted quite a long time - even with the Bearded Dragons wolfing down many of them at each feeding. As for the Crested Geckos, I feed the roaches, of appropriate sizes to my adult crested geckos all the way down to newborn cresties. I also have a single New Caledonian Mossy Gecko (
Rhacodactylus chahoua) who loves them as well. Today he polished off an adult male Blaptica dubia which was one heck of a feat considering the roach was about 1/3 to 1/2 his size. That first order of roaches lasted as long as it did because they were breeding just about all along. I did eventually get down to what was probably my last 50 of them or so because I was not really trying to establish a long term breeding colony and because I was feeding the roaches to my herps faster than they were reproducing. Thus their numbers fell to the point that I had to place another order few days ago.
All the best,
GB
It sure looks as white as the driven snow, this is one pretty amazing looking American Alligator. This photo was submitted to the blog by Deb H (a hat tip and my thanks to her) along with a photo of another white gator but I lost the email into the nether world on cyberspace before I downloaded the second one. Sorry about that.
Although I have kept Crested geckos on and off over the past few years, it still amazes me how easy it is to care for them and to breed them if you can maintain the right temperatures for them. I keep mine in the basement where the year round temperature probably does not deviate more than 4 degrees either way from 70 except during longer hot spells when it may go into the low eighties. (in which case the CG tanks get moved into the finished basement room with the air conditioner.)Other than watching the temperature, I keep the humidity fairly high by daily mistings, use a substrate that holds moisture (I use cypress mulch), have plenty of hiding places for them in their enclosure, give them food on a daily basis and clean the tank about weekly (or sooner if their droppings are on the glass).
