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Live Organic Dubia Roaches

Live Organic Dubia Roaches

$10.00 USD
$10.00 USD
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Dubia roaches (Blaptica dubia) have largely replaced crickets as the gold standard for feeder insects in the reptile hobby. They are widely considered one of the absolute best staple feeders you can offer.

Here is why they make such an excellent feeder for reptiles:

  • Exceptional Nutrition: Dubia roaches are densely packed with nutrients. They offer significantly higher protein and lower fat levels than mealworms or superworms.
  • High Meat-to-Shell Ratio: They have a much softer exoskeleton and contain significantly less indigestible chitin than crickets or mealworms. This makes them much easier for reptiles to digest and drastically lowers the risk of impaction, especially for juveniles.
  • Silent and Odorless: Unlike crickets, which chirp loudly at all hours and have a notoriously strong, foul smell, Dubia roaches are completely silent and produce virtually no odor when kept in a clean, dry bin.
  • No Escape Artists: They are incredibly easy to contain. They cannot jump, they cannot climb smooth surfaces like glass or slick plastic, and while the adult males do have wings, they cannot achieve true sustained flight (they only flutter to cushion a fall).
  • Long Shelf Life: They are incredibly hardy insects that can live for a year or two. Unlike crickets, which are fragile and often experience massive die-offs in their storage containers, Dubias are rugged and very easy to keep alive long-term.
  • They Don't Bite: Crickets can actually bite and stress out your reptile if left uneaten in the enclosure. Dubia roaches are docile, have no interest in biting, and will simply try to hide if left alone.

Here is exactly how to set up a storage container to keep them alive and nutritious for your reptiles:

The Enclosure

Use a standard, smooth-sided plastic storage tub (like a Rubbermaid or Sterilite bin). Since Dubias strongly prefer the dark, an opaque or dark-colored tub is best. Because they cannot climb smooth plastic, you don't even need a lid as long as the sides are a few inches taller than their climbing structures. If you do use a lid, cut a large hole in the top and hot-glue aluminum window screen over it — excellent ventilation is critical to keep the bin dry and odor-free.

Housing and Hides

Do not use substrate (like soil or oats) on the bottom of the bin. It traps moisture and makes cleaning a nightmare. Instead, leave the floor bare and use cardboard egg flats.

  • Stack the egg flats vertically (like books on a shelf) rather than laying them flat.
  • This maximizes their living space and allows their waste (frass) to fall neatly to the bare floor, making it very easy to sweep or vacuum up.

Food and Hydration

To keep them nutritious for your reptiles, they need to be gut-loaded.

  • Dry Food: Provide a shallow dish of high-quality dry roach chow, ground oats, or a mix of grains.
  • Hydration: Never use a bowl of water, as Dubias will quickly drown. Provide all their hydration through fresh produce. Carrots, squash, apple slices, and orange slices are excellent.
  • Crucial tip: Place the fresh food in a shallow dish or on a piece of plastic lid so it doesn't touch the cardboard egg flats. Wet cardboard will quickly mold and crash your colony. Remove uneaten produce after 48 hours.

Temperature

If you are just storing them to feed off, standard room temperature (65°F to 75°F) is absolutely perfect. At this temperature, they will eat, stay healthy, and grow very slowly, but they will not breed.

FLORIDA CUSTOMERS, IMPORTANT: Dubia roaches are NOT legal in Florida! We cannot ship Dubia roaches to you if you live in Florida. If you order by accident, we will contact you to swap with another species or we will cancel and refund your order.

Discoid roaches are the Florida-legal feeder roach. We will have Discoid roaches very soon.

We care for our Dubias as pets, and that means no hormones, no chemicals, and no stress  - only happy, healthy roaches. Perfect for starting your own roach farm or stocking up to feed your pets.

All our Dubia are gut-loaded when you receive them. We always include high-protein, high-calcium dry food and a small piece of wet food in every cup to ensure your Dubia have food for their trip and/or for the next few days.

Please select the size of Dubia roach your pet prefers to eat (or can fit their mouth around!). We recommend always going for quantity over size if you are unsure whether the bugs are too big (by that we mean giving a larger number of small bugs rather than a smaller number of larger ones).

Note - we are currently selecting primarily male roaches for shipment.  If you want females as well, please let us know in your order/checkout Notes.

Shipping Tips:

  • Please check your weather conditions prior to ordering to make sure inclement weather delays and extreme temperatures are avoided!
  • We ship with USPS in the summer and UPS in the winter. If you live in Florida or on the West Coast, we will use USPS year-round (unless you purchase UPS 2nd Day Air or Next Day Air).
  • In the summertime, we HIGHLY recommend doing Hold for Pickup at your nearest Post Office. Hold for Pickup means the Post Office will hold your order until you pick it up. Under normal circumstances, the Post Office will call you to let you know it is ready for you to pick up. This option requires no extra steps from you other than your permission and your phone number. Watch your tracking carefully in case the Post Office doesn't call you - sometimes they forget!
  • Please understand that when your order leaves our facility and is taken in by the Postal Service or UPS, we no longer have control over its fate. Delays and shipping issues are very common these days, and there is not much we can do to move the package forward when that happens. We do have contacts at USPS, but they can really only give us insight as to where it might be. They cannot predict when it will arrive!
  • We've found that most order death occurs in the last leg of the trip, from your local Post Office or UPS hub to your door. This is why Hold for Pickup is so important for hotter or colder temperatures (80+ degrees, or 45 degrees or less).
  • Most farms require Hold for Pickup no matter what, or they won't honor a live guarantee. We try to be a bit more flexible than that, but if we see your weather is too hot or cold, please take our recommendation to Hold for Pickup! We promise it's for the best!
  • We will do our best to reship orders that arrive dead; please let us know ASAP when this happens. While we don't love to see photos of dead bugs, we may ask for one so we can make adjustments on how we packaged them if needed.
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