Cooorndog Posted December 31, 2014 Share Posted December 31, 2014 I am new to the site and posted something like this in the wrong section. Thank you for bringing it to my attention. I just bought a large Dubia colony about 1 month ago. The guy wasn't taking care of them. I am trying to save the colony. i have 1 adult Bearded Dragon and 24 hatchlings with another 25 eggs incubating. So you can see why i bought a large colony. The guy had them off of heat stored in an insulated garage. When i went to pick them up the egg crates where wet and they had a smell. I immediatly removed all the damp egg crates and put new ones in. I also removed several males, the ratio was way off from neglect i guess. I would guess i took out 1000 males to get the ratio right in the 2 totes. I am housing them in 35 gal tote's. All together i would say i have 20,000. i thought the smell would eventually go away. No suck luck yet. New egg crates in both tote's. i noticed several dead could have been old age i dont know. They are still reproducing, so i removed all the nymth's to a new 20 gal tote to be safe, and will continue to do that. He was feeding them cat food i thought may be causing the smell so i removed all of the fras to ensure i got all the cat food out. I was told that the cat food could have caused them to be in kidney failure in a way, and that the build up of uric acid could be making them sick from the high protien cat food. Should i be concerned about feeding them to my dragons? Any other idea's for getting rid of the smell? I did notice some little gnats in the tote's during clean out and after cleaning out all the fras i dont see them any more. Any help in this matter would be greatly appreciated. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smiley Posted December 31, 2014 Share Posted December 31, 2014 What does it smell like and how many have died over the month? They do have a natural smell and in that amount it should be semi strong. If it's a rotten smell something's wrong. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hisserdude Posted December 31, 2014 Share Posted December 31, 2014 I highly doubt cat food is the problem, I have fed my hissers cat food for most of their life, only recently have I changed their diet to dog food, and that is just because it's cheaper. If you haven't already, I would clean out the container, put new egg cartons, and keep them a little dry and well ventilated. Hope this helps. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cooorndog Posted December 31, 2014 Author Share Posted December 31, 2014 In my opinion i think it's the dead smell. maybe a little sour kinda.. ive got so many it's hard to tell exactly how many has died. im going to do another clean out over the holiday weekend. ill count the dead. I am pretty new at all of this, all i now is i had mouths to feed so i did what i needed to too get enough food for all my dragons. Now i want to keep them growing, try to stop the dying. i can live with a little bit of a smell. thanx for the answers so far. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hisserdude Posted December 31, 2014 Share Posted December 31, 2014 You should get a clean up crew ( isopods, dermestid beetles, springtails, etc). They will eat the dead roaches, and any leftover food, which should stop the smell. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RomanBuck Posted December 31, 2014 Share Posted December 31, 2014 I would split the colony in 2 if you have close to 20,000. With all of those roaches all that will happen is the heat and humidity will keep rising. Unless you have good ventalation but I would still go a head and split the colony for sure. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cooorndog Posted December 31, 2014 Author Share Posted December 31, 2014 I have 2 35 gal totes with prob 10,000 a piece. Should I break them down further? My main question I guess is are they healthy enough to feed my dragons? The fear i have is the smell? Could it be a health problem? I have cleaned the cages they both have all new egg crates, could the previous owner have caused health problems from neglect? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wcbpolish Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 Perhaps use a screen to separate out the nymphs from the adults. Leave your 2 adult colonies as they are, and use the nymphs to start 2 new colonies in clean, fresh totes. Feed the nymphs a good balanced diet, and as soon as the nymph colonies are adults and producing babies of their own, destroy the initial two colonies, clean the totes really well, and use the next generation from your two newer colonies to populate them. It may just be that the adults are dying of old age and rotting in the colony. That's my two cents. Not sure what it's worth. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smiley Posted January 2, 2015 Share Posted January 2, 2015 With 20,000 you'll have a lot of old age deaths in general. I wouldn't do anything rash until you have a handle on your new colony. That's a lot of money in roaches. If you're worried about feeders take a few hundred appropriately sized and put in a new container. Feed them nutritious things for a few days and observe smells and general health. The small group will make it easier to see if you have problems and works great as a feeder staging. Feed the entire container and repeat. I've been staging my monitor feeders this way and it's working well. Only Nymphs and males go in for me. My colonies are still rather young though, so i don't have a die off issue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cooorndog Posted January 7, 2015 Author Share Posted January 7, 2015 I have been on this sit freakwently since I joined. I messed with the temperature a little bit to find a facinating responce. my room temp was around 74 to 78 degrees, i have heaters on both my 35 gal totes. my house stays at around 68 to 70 degrees, so after reading several posts on here i decided to turn off the extra heat in my roach room for a test. The smell was gone! i believe i was maybe keeping them to warm. What do you guys think? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andee Posted January 7, 2015 Share Posted January 7, 2015 I wouldn't be surprised, they do best at 80-90 degree temps, though this is a very broad range because I can't remember the exact number at the moment. But the thing is with that much body heat from the roaches and decomposing frass and such, it probably was adding heat issues. Do you have screening in the lids or sides? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cooorndog Posted January 9, 2015 Author Share Posted January 9, 2015 yes i do have screen on the lids for circulation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cooorndog Posted January 19, 2015 Author Share Posted January 19, 2015 Well the smell is in order, but ive still had a few dying. One was an adult female she was just laying there dead, so i got her out and put her in a sandwich bag. In a day or so i found a smaller female also dead so i put her in the bag. a couple days later i noticed knats in the bag... just wondering how this happend? There was no knats in the bag before, then knats. Could they have been what killed her? I havnt noticed a lot of knats in the bin, Had a few when i first bought them, cleaned the bins out good havnt noticed very many since. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tongue Flicker Posted January 22, 2015 Share Posted January 22, 2015 I haven't had any dubia smell problems yet but maybe you could enhance your ventilation some more. Try using an inverted laptop cooler placed on top of your enclosure to blow away the smell or something Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brandon's Bugs Posted January 24, 2015 Share Posted January 24, 2015 There were probably eggs already laid on the dead roach when you put it in the bag. It doesn't take long for that to happen. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cooorndog Posted January 26, 2015 Author Share Posted January 26, 2015 Thank you Brandon. I have had a couple of females die, that was the only one that hatched those flies. ive been bagging the ones up to check and see if it was a problem. going to start a new post on breeding. im not producing babies as fast as i think i should so i thought id make a post and see what i can learn. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChiManSam Posted March 27, 2015 Share Posted March 27, 2015 Something you may consider for your totes, is a double vent, I use it on all my tote because I believe air quality is just as important as food and water quality, heres a link to a video I posted on youtube, the vents are in the beggining of the video. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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