Anyone grow their own live food?
 

What do you guys breed/grow for your herps? I currently breed orange head roaches for my Pacman frog - Ceratophrys ornata

I suggested roaches a while back, and my wife freaked. LOL Tried growing my own crickets, but the smell was something else, and I couldn't keep the pinheads alive.

I used to breed my own mice for my 12+ snakes, but when I had to sell off the snakes it became more convenient to buy my mice frozen from miceonice.com. I think they've gone out of biz since then though.

What kind of roaches did you try? Also crickets are annoying to keep. They make way too much noise (the males) and they will eat each other if not given enough food.

I grow flightless fruit flies. They work good for frogs and fish.

I keep a colony of mealworms. The boxies love them as snacks.

I keep a tub with a breeding colony of blaptica dubia roaches. Mist two times a day and feed strictly fruits and vegetables. I use a warmer for arthritis pain for heat underneath. With this colony I have roaches of all sizes to feed my knobtail geckos and never have to spend any money ever on feeders unless I want to treat them with crickets, waxworms, silkworms etc.

Yep, i started dubias a few months ago. Got bout 60 right now, i dont expect much breeding since i use no heat plus winter soon but, im happy with em eitherway.

dubia roaches are pretty incredible. i raise them as feed for fish. they get blended up and crushed and added with several other ingredients to make home made pellet type food.

those are a live food that can take severe neglect. when i deployed to iraq, i simply set them up with a large tub of dog food and a large tub of water gel and left them in the garage. when i got back, to my surprise, not only did they survive, but about tripled in numbers.

the dog food was completely gone, the water gel completely dried, and my wife didnt even know we still had the colony.

they are slow at start, but probably one of the easiest live foods to grow.

How hard is it to keep the cycle going?

000

I use to breed red runner, some got lose in the house and start breeding under my sink. Once winter cone hopefully they all die. My main breeding group was Dubia.

I've been thinking of setting up a 55 gallon Fire Belly Newt tank and i'm sure i'll have to start another worm box to feed them. I never tried roaches, but worms served me really well when I use to breed bettas and cichlids. Fairly easy to set up a good colony.

My mom and I have about 20 snakes, and a good chunk of the ball pythons refuse to eat frozen or prekilled mice. So the spare room is devoted to breeding and raising mice for them, which means it's nice to have stock on hand when we have eggs or babies, but a weekly pain in the ass with cage cleaning.

I'm hoping the FB will feed on some shrimp culls as well.

I still remember the smell when a cage cleaning is skipped! LOL I used to have around 50 cages I used. Now that I'm into aquatics, I don't miss the stench a bit! :)

For a smaller number of cages, look for swiss webster mice. Originally bred for labs, they have between double and triple the litter size.