Connorology
Avid Member
When did dubia roaches first become commercially available? And when did they become as widespread as they are now?
I started out keeping reptiles when I was a kid in the late 90's and early to mid 00's. Back then, the insect feeders commercially available were crickets and mealworms, with the occasional superworm. I actually bred hissing cockroaches briefly and fed the nymphs to my lizards, but unlike dubias they proved to be escape artists so I ended up getting rid of the colony. I I sold or re-homed most of my reptile collection when I was in high school, and the only one I kept was my ball python (side note: he turned 23 this year).
When I re-entered the hobby after college (2013) after what felt like a short hiatus, everything was different. The cricket species I used as feeders as a kid had apparently been rendered commercially extinct by a virus and replaced by another similar but slightly different species of cricket (second side note: I wonder how much that screws up nutrition data collected before the switch?). Also, all the stores were selling dubia roaches as alternatives to crickets. I was initially repulsed given my experience with the hissers, but I came to like them substantially more than smelly death prone crickets.
I recently bought the "thoughts for food" book available on this site, and despite a copyright date of 2009 it doesn't even mention dubias, only hissers and death's head roaches. So where did dubias come from? And when did they get so popular?
I started out keeping reptiles when I was a kid in the late 90's and early to mid 00's. Back then, the insect feeders commercially available were crickets and mealworms, with the occasional superworm. I actually bred hissing cockroaches briefly and fed the nymphs to my lizards, but unlike dubias they proved to be escape artists so I ended up getting rid of the colony. I I sold or re-homed most of my reptile collection when I was in high school, and the only one I kept was my ball python (side note: he turned 23 this year).
When I re-entered the hobby after college (2013) after what felt like a short hiatus, everything was different. The cricket species I used as feeders as a kid had apparently been rendered commercially extinct by a virus and replaced by another similar but slightly different species of cricket (second side note: I wonder how much that screws up nutrition data collected before the switch?). Also, all the stores were selling dubia roaches as alternatives to crickets. I was initially repulsed given my experience with the hissers, but I came to like them substantially more than smelly death prone crickets.
I recently bought the "thoughts for food" book available on this site, and despite a copyright date of 2009 it doesn't even mention dubias, only hissers and death's head roaches. So where did dubias come from? And when did they get so popular?
