Paco's proper introduction

[CMahoney]

Hello everyone! This is Paco, our new Bearded Dragon. He was about one month old when we picked him up from PetSmart 3 weeks ago. He is very active and a great eater. I had no idea young bearded dragons ate so much. I feed him as many small live crickets he will eat in a 10 minute period 3 times a day. He eats at least 30 crickets a day but I feel like he would eat 100 if I let him. Anyway I just wanted to say hello to everyone and I look forward to utilizing this forum even more in the future. It has already been a great help with everything so far.

 

[Germ]

 

[Pat B]

He is sooo cute. Welcome to BDF!

 

[Mungi's Buddha]

Welcome to the BDF Community

 

[Jason P & lexx]

welcome

 

[Noella]

Hi and welcome to BDF! When they're babies, they're little eating machines. When they're adults, they give you the stink eye if you give them something they don't like like collard greens instead of their favorite salad green (Turnip green). Allie was tired of eating turnip greens so I switched her to collard greens. She gave me the 'Look' and then went to eating. (I'm not sure if the 'Look' was thank you! Or 'Eck! What's this? Collard greens? Okay, I'll eat them. Ahh! Change! Now give me some crickets! Where are my crickets and superworms!? You promised!'

Don't worry, I ordered crickets from Flukers because the cricket man wasn't working out. They were dying every day and I had zero humidity in the tank.

 

[Noella]

Welcome to the BDF Community

Let's see what Mungi's doing today! Basking and looking at the camera. He does know that he's got a bunch of fans. Tell him Allie says hello too!

 

[Pat B]

Hi and welcome to BDF! When they're babies, they're little eating machines. When they're adults, they give you the stink eye if you give them something they don't like like collard greens instead of their favorite salad green (Turnip green). Allie was tired of eating turnip greens so I switched her to collard greens. She gave me the 'Look' and then went to eating. (I'm not sure if the 'Look' was thank you! Or 'Eck! What's this? Collard greens? Okay, I'll eat them. Ahh! Change! Now give me some crickets! Where are my crickets and superworms!? You promised!'

Don't worry, I ordered crickets from Flukers because the cricket man wasn't working out. They were dying every day and I had zero humidity in the tank.

Do your crickets stay alive when you order them online? I have always bought them at Petsmart and usually 10 will be dead the next day. So frustrating. How many do you order at a time?? Thanks...Spike!!

 

[Mungi's Buddha]

Do your crickets stay alive when you order them online? I have always bought them at Petsmart and usually 10 will be dead the next day. So frustrating. How many do you order at a time?? Thanks...Spike!!

Yet another reason to convert to roaches...they live sooooo much longer Lol..just sayin'

 

[CMahoney]

I just started breeding dubia roaches. I am still using crickets because I read that I need to wait around 2 months to get the colony going. I have 100 nymphs right now. I have been feeding off them a little bit but I am going to try and wait it out now. So far it has been going well though

 

[Germ]

If you are only starting out with Nymphs, it will take a lot longer than 2 months for a colony be established enough to feed out of. They don't even come into adulthood until they are 3-4 months old, then they have to breed, gestate, incubate, lay, then the nymphs have to grow for a couple of months to feeder size. Often starting out with nymphs, the process can be 10-12 months before a colony is established enough to feed out of. When starting out a colony, I always let the first batches of nymphs grow to into adults before feeding anything but male juveniles & sub-adults, to keep the male to female ratio in the vicinity of 1M-4F. This is necessary to keep the replenishing the adults to keep the colony going & breeding.

 

[CMahoney]

Thanks for the tip. I did get a mix size of nymphs so some are far too big for Paco to eat right now but hopefully they are close to adulthood so they can start breeding. However I'm sure it will take much longer than 2 months before it is fully established. I was thinking that it may not be a bad idea to order another 50 or 100 and asking for a few pairs of adults.

 

[Mungi's Buddha]

Pairs of adults are no good. Germ mentioned a proper ratio of male to female adults that is necessary to maintain in order to get and keep things established with your colony.
If I were you I would set the nymph you plan on feeding in a desperate bin and make that your Feeder Bin. You can feed those gut load to prepare them for feeding to your dragon. Gut load really needs to be fed for at least 24-48 hours before the feeders are given to your dragon.
Then you can set up your breeder colony bin. Your colony diet can be a decent quality dry dog food if you wish and they will be fine with that. You don't have to keep the breeder colony as "pumped up" nutritionally as you will your feeders.
Sounds like what you purchased before was just feeder roaches. If you look online many of the suppliers will offer starter colonies which will give you a proper adult male/female ratio. That is what you want if you are really wanting to get your colony going in a reasonable amount of time.
Nymphs only as mentioned take quite awhile to reach adults and start producing.
Enjoy!

 

[CMahoney]

Good call about the adults and I did see a colony starter kit but it was just the equipment, they didn't sex the roaches or sell adults or anything. I will have to look into that more. Is it necessary to have a separate feeder bin? I guess it makes sense to have another bin so I have a place to put the extra adult males when getting the ratio right in the breeder bin. But if I was able to sex them as young nymphs and feed off the males would there be any other reason to keep a separate bin? I am already gut loading them in the current bin they are in now.

 

[Mungi's Buddha]

If you want you could keep everything in one bin. The reason I suggested a Colony bin and a Feeder bin (which could be much smaller) is that it really don't want or need to gut load the entire colony and especially if you are buying gut load then it will become expensive. Besides that I have read that keeping the entire colony beefed up on gut load all the time will actually speed up their life cycle and shorten their life span. The Breeding colony will also eat very aggressively. I have watched mine polish off a pound of ground up dry dog food as well as greens and a couple of sliced oranges in a single night and be looking for more...lol
You could theoretically just separate out your feeders a day or two in advance and put them in a smaller bin to gut load.

 

[Noella]

Do your crickets stay alive when you order them online? I have always bought them at Petsmart and usually 10 will be dead the next day. So frustrating. How many do you order at a time?? Thanks...Spike!!

No. About 250 of them are dead on arrival and after that, they start dying one by one within a span of a whole month and Allie had to go without crickets for four whole days. The poor baby was looking in the cricket tank and wanting the dead ones. I couldn't feed her any those crickets so I tried to give her some extra greens to eat. Even with no humidity in their tank and the house. I've got an room AC on to take out the humidity. (The humidity in the house without the room AC is unbearible.) The only water source the crickets have had lately are paper towels that are spritzed with water and they were raised on cornmeal. They're all gone now. Have been for four days now. I went out last night and bought super worms until my shipment comes in from Flukers. I wasn't going to buy crickets from Petland because one of the managers complained about the 250 I bought to feed Allie.

I order a 1000 to because I need them to at least last a month. (I'm trying to save on gas and the life of my SUV which is about 7-10 years old now with over 100,000 miles on it.)

I used to buy my crickets from Petland until they changed from Flukers to a cheap breeder. Their crickets don't last long and are dead within a week of buying them.

 

[Noella]

Yet another reason to convert to roaches...they live sooooo much longer Lol..just sayin'

I thought about roaches off and on. I'm sure she'd love them because they're meatier and crunchier. She loves that crunch. (Who doesn't love that crunch they make when they chomp down on their crickets or supers. Plus, her grandma doesn't want them in the house because she's afraid they'll climb out and run rampant all over the house.