the dubia roach

easy to keep, easy to feed. lately, i have been feeding mine plant clippings, duckweed, and algae from my tanks. that pretty much takes care of their water and food needs.
i usually blend a few adults up and dry them out into wafers for my bottom feeders and shrimp, but i imagine a larger fish could snap them up pretty easily.

they are pretty clumsy though. they cannot climb glass or fly, and if they end up on their backs, they have to wait until another roach comes along for them to grab ahold of in order to right themselves. its kinda funny.
one odd thing about these roaches is that they exhibit parental care, albeit briefly. when the females give birth(another odd thing for a roach) they will protect the little nymphs with their bodies until their shells harden and they crawl away.
its quite odd to see all the roaches running away while one lone female stubbornly refuses to move, backing up over its young every time you nudge it.






every so often i move the young into another tank and move new adults into this one.

I have seen them offered at a local store. My only reproach, as they seem very convenient to culture, is that my fishes are too small to eat them whole. It is possible to blend them as you did, but I lack a blender. It is lovely that you can simply feed them tank cuttings, or if you feel the need to get quality food into picky eater fish, you can feed them the fish food you desire to get to the fish.

i guess you could always use these guys as bait too, but i have never tried that.

And these...er, Roaches, are good for...what - fish food? There's gotta be a better way.

And these...er, Roaches, are good for...what - fish food? There's gotta be a better way.

im sure there are plenty of better ways.

but then again, why go better when you can have giant, pathetic, roaches?

i have even cultured pantry moths and carpet beetles. im always looking for things i can grow for fish food with whatever i have on hand.

They really do not smell, and they cannot survive in northern climates. They also will not breed below 68 degrees, so if a few accidentally get loose in your house, turn the heat or AC down for a bit. We have raised them for reptile feed.

I'm sure they're very special.

I aquired a small colony of these (half dozen or so of each, males and females) at the beginning of summer (to feed a bearded dragon) and am pretty impressed by them. So far they seem to be fairly slow growing (to adulthood, anyway) but their population increase is astounding. I probably have 250 little ones, no problem. I only occasionally feed them out since I'm trying to boost the colony, but both the dragon and medium-large fish (most adult shiners seem to have no trouble) seem to enjoy them. They eat just about anything, have no detectable smell (I used to keep hissing cockroaches and even they had a slight odor) and don't require a specialized setup. I currently keep mine in a large critter-keeper type tank with a few flats of egg-carton. Their container is kept on the screen top of one of my kingsnake cages and thus gets a little ambient heat, but they are only marginally above room temperature and breeding like champs!