Highly considering starting a colony

[Pascal 2012]

I am trying different feeders with my chameleon and I hope he likes them so I can start a colony of roaches. While looking up information I see a 1 male to 5-10 female, along with egg crates standing and heat from 85-90 degrees. right now with it being winter it is cold so a heat pad would be needed should i use one or two? Also where should I buy from and how many? I plan on using water crystals along with some oranges and greens but is there a dry mix you can suggest?

 

[pssh]

I would buy a small number first to see if your chameleons like them. I have always been able to get mine to eat them, but there are those rare chameleons that just wont eat roaches. I have linked my blog which discusses housing/breeding/buying them at the bottom of the post.

Male:Female ratio should be anywhere from 1:3 to 1:5-6 or so. I wouldn't go as far as 1:10 though. That's a lot of females with very few males. The heat pads really depend on your temps and how good them heat pads are/if you can control the heat they put out. I like making my own heat pads out of flexwatt heat tape. You can add a light dimmer to it to control the temps.

Often times, the best (and worst) prices for dubia are in various classifieds online. The chameleon forum classifieds are a good place to look. So are the classifieds on faunaclassifieds. You can also check the reputation of the sellers on the board of inquiry on faunaclassifieds (google it.) As for the food, I always suggest using a good gutload rather than using something else and then gutloading just before they are fed off. I firmly believe that insects are more nutritious and healthy if they are raised on good food (just like people are.) You can make your own dry gutload (sandrachameleon's blog on here is great for making your own, and I have some recommendations in my blog below) or you can buy a good quality gutload like cricket crack or dinofuel.


https://www.chameleonforums.com/blogs/pssh/577-blaptica-dubia-roach-keeping-breeding-feeding.html