Hey people ,I've got some orange spotted roaches at the last SOS expo ,since then these guys have not bred ,I am keeping them in a black plastic tub with almost half the lid cut of ,1 heat pad ,egg cartons and dry cat food and stuff scattered all over the tub ,and feed them once a week with oranges and sometimes apples ,is there something I am doing wrong ????why aren't they breeding :igiveup:

How big is the container and how many dubias do you have?

I had similar problems with dubias and lobsters (of all things), got bored of the colonies and tossed them in with my hissers which are in a 110lt Addis lockable. Within a month everyone was breeding like mad, I honestly cant explain it other than to think that either a bigger container works better or the roaches prefer to be crowded.

Incidently, all three species bear live young (no eggs laid) so no ooths for the hissers to eat, I wouldnt chuck turks in here...

Are they mature yet? are there males and females?

How many do you have?

Ah yes, thanks Cascade, if they're still babies then no breeding! :lol:

I will quickly run through the basics of keeping Dubai's. Neitzchie bought my colony which took me forever, and it is the same advice I am going to give to all.

1) Container - Preferable airtight seal "now cut a HUGE square hole in the lid, using a hot stanely knife, scalpels will work to but you need it red hot to cut through the lid. Place your mesh over the top "stainless steel 304 / 50mesh from capemesh or meshcape" and hotglue that puppy over the hole. Done - ventilation is no sorted and also the chances your colony being invaded by any other insect / pest.
2) Okay so stack all your eggflats horizontally "back-to-front" until there is no more place/space left. Even if it means you need to FORCE the last one in I use 1 bowl for food mix and the second for water. So eyeball how many eggflats you need to cut in half to place these bowls on. I use pinkpythons products as they are close by "just up the road" and the roaches can easily climb into and out of these bowls. Fill the one bowl with WASHED pool filter sand or go and buy a packet at the Petshop, and give it a thorough wash. For those that don't have a PVC sieve like I do to wash the filter sand / gravel here is a tip. Take your moms old wedding veil wrap the needed amount of pool filter sand in the veil, tie it down with some good twine and hang it from a tree and give it a good blast of water "cleaning the pool filter sand cannot be stressed enough" pour your clean pool filter sand into the bowl and add your water
The second bowl I like to fill with a mix of 1part - powdered montego classic "PUPPY" mix, 1part bran and 1 part oats"
3) Place your roaches into their new home and place your enclosure onto a heat pad. I have my heat pads running even through summer "YES I DO"

No with Dubai's the only thing that slows the breeding process is that the females will protect their nymphs / young. Hell knows from what, so what I like to do is once every 2 weeks, remove my bowls, and shake each eggflat so that all the roaches fall into the container, leaving the females ready for mating once more, as the nymphs can and will fend for themselves. People in the USA "big breeders" would rather remove the nymphs and place them in a second container identical to the first. "The really do have nothing better to do.

Oranges, bananas and mango's are just treats, however I have noticed that oranges does indeed boost their breeding.

Here is a photo of my old Hisser colony setup I hope this helps. The people who I sell to would agree that it works like a charm, Neitzchie is doing great with his colony I sold to him. Why reinvent the wheel.

If you have your container standing on a table, place the table legs in plastic cups and fill with oil "sunflower or wood polishing oil" you will never ever see a ant near your colony, unless you forgot to fill up on oil

Good luck to all

Yea, the colony I got from iclazion is still breeding like crazy. The only thing I have changed on it is too stick black vinyl over half the clear tub. I noticed with my blatta lateralis is that they breed like crazy in the dark vs the light. I have noticed a lot more nymphs in the dubia box since I am keeping them dark.

Oh and while I have them I give them an orange as soon as I see they have eaten the last one. I have also noticed that they love apple. In fact they would rather eat the apple than anything else.