Hera (Rainbow Beardies) x Cronos (Where Dragons Dwell) Hatchling

Here is a beautiful little hatchling produced by my 2 favorite breeders of 2014, dam: Hera trans het hypo (Rainbow Beardies) x sire: Cronos trans hypo (WDD import).

Dubia Roaches: For Sale Joplin, MO

I have been breeding dubia roaches for a little over a year. My colony is large enough to support my primary use of feeding bearded dragons and to sell excess. I'm willing to match any online dubia roach dealer's price and the great thing about this opportunity is that I'm located here in Joplin, MO. If you are interested in placing an order for dubia roaches or have any questions, please feel free to contact me personally at  RadioactiveReptiles@gmail.com

I recommend starting your own colony if you take care of more than 3 animals who will eat them as a feeder insect. This option is much more cost effective than purchasing dozens of crickets or containers of feeder worms from other local dealers. It's simple to start your own colony. Here is a list of things that you'll need; 1) Large Tote opaque with smooth sides (the kind Wal-Mart sells) 2) glue gun 3) wire screen (approximately cut 9" x 4" 4) duct tape 5) 50 mixed roaches including 3 adult females to 1 adult male at the least 6) egg cartons 7) a dark dry place in your house that maintains a 70 degree minimum temperature (mine are in my closet). I add enough corn meal (yellow or white) to cover 3/4 of the bottom of my container. Then I build a structure out of egg cartons on top of that for them to colonize. I also provide water crystals made from mixing water and Soil Moist which you can buy on Amazon for much less than others sell it for. Depending on the size of your colony add a potato cut 4 ways into the container about twice a week. Make sure you remove any remains of vegetables or fruit as quickly as possible. Mold will kill your roaches! Below I've posted some pictures depicting my colony and lit set up.

There are several advantages to feeding dubia roaches; 1) they're more nutritious than other feeder insects 2) they don't stink 3) they're easy to care for 4) they breed easily 6) they're very cost effective The downside to dubia roaches is that they are roaches and the idea of having thousands of roaches colonizing in your closet tends to freak some people out. I'd say that most normal people are a little creeped out by this idea but who am I kidding. If you're reading this then you're probably a reptile keeper and you know that neither you or I are normal. I love exotic reptiles and wouldn't trade them for the world, maybe a winning Powerball ticket for $600 million?

My Dubia Colony

Lid Example

Golden Rule #1 Do not feed your bearded dragon anything larger than the diameter between it's eyes!

Egg Size Correlating to Genetics: Bearded Dragons

Is there a correlation to egg size and genetics in bearded dragon hatchlings? The 3 largest eggs I hatched out of my Nada x Xerxes clutch were translucent.





Nada

Xerxes

Dubia Roach separation anxiety, how do they sort the nymphs out?

Ok, this week I ran into a new obstacle. I have 13 bearded dragon hatchlings that eat like hummingbirds. Last week I dropped $50.00 on crickets from Armstrongs, wonderful crickets but they were gone in a week so now I need a new feeder. Luckily I happen to have about 6,000+ blaptica dubia aka: dubia roaches in my closet stashed away for safe keeping. I typically sort out about 100 of the baby dubia, nymphs, at a time but this is very time consuming. I could order 1,000 dubia nymphs from buydubiaroaches and drop another $50.00 or thanks to my loving wife, I chose to sort through my colony of 6,000+ dubia. Now, the question at hand is how to sort the nymphs out without eating away at ten years of my life? Well, there's a wonderful little invention, you might have heard about it, Microsoft offered 44.6 billion dollars for it, Google, which was known as Yahoo! for the old crusty people like myself who remember it that way. Apparently this "Google" on the "internet device" will help answer questions. My wife came up with this wonderful little site, ironically is also on blogger.com, here's the link: Dubia Roach Guide. I ended up spending $7.50 on 3 Walmart brand painters buckets, you know the kind you use to wash your car with, drilled about 3 million holes and voilà, 1,000 sorted dubia nymphs. Now my ravenous dragon hatchlings have about $50.00 worth of nymphs give or take a hundred and I only had to spend $7.50. I actually dropped a twenty but I netted Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and some antibacterial hand soap, the trilogy is complete! Below are some pics of our friend blaptica dubia, oh yeah check out this care sheet for optimal care, insert link here.



Top: Male (distuingishable by it's longer wings) Bottom: Female





Size ratio for dubia nymph




Solid Example of a Dubia Colony

Help Impaction?!?!?!?

I have been dealing with a 0.1 beardie (bearded dragon), named Ruby, that has lost her appetite gradually over the past few months. Her weight has dropped considerably, enough to the point where her tail is showing bones through her skin. After using the Google on the internet device I came up with some tactics. First I tried feeding her pedialyte through a syringe, then I skipped a day. She immediately starting looking more lively and her colors got brighter. Day 2 of feeding I mixed baby food and Pedialyte then administered it to Ruby and she loved the baby food. I skipped another day and mixed baby food with water, then later administered Pedialyte. Now I've run into another problem. Her symptoms are as follows; Ruby has lost skin pigment and looks almost completely white, she looks bloated and I have unfortunately found a hard mass on her right side if you're looking at her belly. I'm starting to think she is impacted as I have not seen signs of parasites in her feces. If she doesn't show any signs of improvement after giving her 2 warm baths, fiber mixed with water and olive oil administered through a syringe, daily stomach massages to try and break up the impaction and warmer cage temps I'm going to have to pay a visit to the local exotic animal veterinarian. Unfortunately I don't think he will perform surgery on Ruby, I'll keep my fingers crossed and hopefully it won't come down to that.

Here is a helpful link if you're experiencing similar problems with your bearded dragon.




Larthagy is a symptom of impaction



X-ray of bearded dragon with sand impaction