Large Dubia die off.

[cab5392@]

Hello, this is my first post on these forums. As some foreknowledge, I have had a flourishing Dubia colony for 7 months now. I did my first separation about a month ago from large-adult dubia in one bin, and all other size nymphs in another. The enclosures have heat pads and screen ventilation lids.

Now for my massive mistake, humidity in my house is very low because of it being winter. I wanted to increase the humidity in my cage and get a reading overnight if I had put a board over the colony's screen ventilation lid. I checked the next morning, and a massive number of bugs (from my valued breeder bin of course) were laying on the ground twitching and listless, and everything in the enclosure was soaked.

I won't be making that mistake again, but I am more curious as to what caused the issue, whether it be ammonia gas let off, or something else triggered by the massive humidity. I pulled all my adult females from the bin as they are the foundation of my colony and separated them into a clean bin with the usual ratio amount of males, but I am still finding more females that are walking poorly and twitchy. All in all I'm upset that I've lost 100 some of my female breeders, but is there anything i can do to help the twitchy ones or keep more from perishing?

[pannaking22]

High humidity really seems to be the enemy of dubia. I'm not sure if anything can be done for the twitchy ones, but you can try keeping the humidity as low as possible in their enclosure and give them plenty of fresh water in a dish as the only humidity source. Probably a long shot, but it might help.