Blaptica dubia (Orange Spotted Cockroaches)

Blaptica dubia

A subadult female B.Dubia

The Orange Spotted Cockroach (blaptica dubia) is a brilliant feeder cockroach. Unfortinately blaptica dubia hasn't taken off in the UK as a live food as much as it has in the US, which is a shame. I do however believe when it does reach the UK it will be very popular. They are large, prolific, and they can't climb or fly. They also encompass the characteristics of most cockroaches in that they are meaty and will eat almost anything.

Blaptica dubia are very easy to culture, they do most of the work themselves.

You will need

A large plastic storage box from a DIY store
Egg crates
Food
Heating via a heat mat or a lamp (optional but recomended)
20-30 Orange Spotted Cockroaches (Blaptica Dubia) to start the colony off

What to feed

Being cockroaches, blaptica dubia will eat virtually anything. Being a herper you want to gut load them in the best way you can. All you really need to offer them is bran/rolled oats and dried dog biscuits. This can be supplimented with commercial bug gut loading products or fish food but they are expensive and not really necessary.

For moisture you can offer fruits and veg. Apples seem to be popular as are oranges, make sure you replace them daily to avoid mould forming. Providing moisture for blaptica dubia seems to be very important as they are known to canabalise if they feel water is in short supply (preumably to remove competition).

the culture

You will need to provide ventilation, for this I recomend cutting/melting a hole in the top of the storage tub and putting aluminium mesh there. This can be glued into place or you can heat the mesh up and just push it over the hole so it melts onto the plastic.

Once you are ready with the tub, put the egg crates in, aim to get 5-6pieces stacked ontop of eachother. The cockroaches don't need substrate (they make their own, which you need to clean out every few months, if you catch what I mean). They are live bearers so they don't require an egg laying site either.

If you've chosen to use a heater now would be the time to add it. If you are using a heatmat simply put it under the tub, possibly under the egg crates so they can hide while being warm (you'll still get a gradient because the higher up in the crates the cooler it will be). Not sure how you'd use a lamp, I've never installed one on a plastic tub, be careful you don't melt the plastic though.

You can add the food do the cockroach set up, I prefer doing it in a bowl but you can just scatter it around if you like. Make sure whatever you do you keep the moist food in a bowl seperate from the dry food (wet dry food = mould = death).

All you've got to do now is put the blaptica dubia in and be patient. The time it takes for you to get youngsters varies but it can be quite a while. Your looking at months not weeks. The population will explode if you leave it though, you'll never need buy crickets again once you have a thriving community of blaptica dubia.