Dubia Roach Care & Breeding Guide (South Africa)
Dubia roaches are the easiest feeder insect to keep and one of the few worth breeding at home. Whether you're holding a month's supply or building a self-sustaining colony, the setup is nearly identical.
The basic bin (holding feeders)
A smooth-sided plastic tub — dubia can't climb clean, smooth plastic, so no lid is strictly needed, though a ventilated lid keeps other insects out. Stack egg trays vertically inside for surface area and hiding spots. No substrate: a bare floor makes cleaning easy and frass simple to harvest. Add a dish of dry roach chow and a dish of water crystals. That's the whole setup.
Temperature
Dubia are tropical. They survive at room temperature but slow right down. For feeders you're just holding, 20–25°C is fine. For growth and breeding you want 27–32°C — a foil heating pad under one end of the bin creates a warm zone while letting roaches self-regulate by moving.
Feeding your feeders
Dry chow as the base, plus fresh fruit and veg a couple of times a week — orange, carrot, butternut and apple are favourites. Remove fresh food before it moulds. What the roach eats becomes what your reptile eats, so a well-fed colony is a gut-loaded colony by default.
Breeding: the numbers that matter
Start with a ratio of roughly 3 females to 1 male (females have stubby wing buds; males have full wings). Keep the colony at 27–32°C with constant food and moisture. Females give birth to live nymphs — around 20–30 per female per month in good conditions — and nymphs mature in 3–5 months depending on heat. A starter colony of 50–100 adults becomes self-sustaining within a few months, at which point you harvest mid-sized nymphs for feeding and leave adults to keep producing.
Harvesting and the frass bonus
Tip an egg tray over a separate tub and the size you need is easy to pick out. The frass that accumulates on the bin floor is a genuinely good organic fertilizer — we sell our own, and if you're breeding, you'll produce your own supply.
Troubleshooting
Colony not breeding? Almost always too cold. Die-off? Usually a moisture source gone mouldy or chow run dry. Smell? A healthy dubia bin has almost no odour — smell means something is rotting; find and remove it.
Ready to start? Live dubia roaches ship nationwide in all sizes.