How many roaches should I get to start a feeding colony

[sss81387]

I've been doing my research into getting roaches, and finally found someone on craigslist that is getting rid of their colony as they have developed a severe allergy. This will be far cheaper than getting them from my local reptile shop, so my previous plan of just getting 6 or so to start is out and getting a decent amount is in. That being said, I'd like to try and keep the colony a manageable, stable size. How many should I start with? I should mention they are dubias. I presently have a bearded dragon, that eats about 2.5 dozen large crickets a week; a pair of leopard geckos that eat about 2.5 dozen large crickets a week; a trapdoor spider that will probably eat 2 decent sized nymphs a week; and a trio of red-eyed tree frogs that will eat several nymphs a piece every couple days. I will be starting a colony of banana roaches soon for the tree frogs (which will hopefully be breeding next year ). I guess I'm just trying to figure out how to calculate the cricket to dubia conversion rate, divide it by the dubia birth rate, and multiply it by the I don't want to get to the point where I have a dubia colony that weighs more than my house! Sorry if that all doesn't add up, I've never been a fan of math .

To summarize: How many dubias from her colony of 5000 should I get to start a colony?

Thanks!

[ArtBug]

Math is not my friend, either! I bought 100 Dubias just to have and they kind of gave me the willies! SO - I found some reptile friends and started giving Dubias away until I had an amount I could deal with.

That being said - with your current needs I'd suggest getting 1000. If you end up having more than you need - you can always sell them or give them away!

[johningeorgia]

The more the merrier. I would take the whole colony and start feeding adult males till you reach about a 1 to 4 male to female ratio. Roaches don't breed as fast as crickets so too many is better than not enough.