Blaptica dubia
– Orange Spotted Roach

A delicious feeder for most tarantulas. Blaptica dubia are a very “clean” roach, producing dry waste and frass that can be used in compost. It is also a very high weight-to-protein ratio feeder, meaning that for it’s size, it produces more edible nourishment than most other feeders.

Elegant and neat with their orange stripes, some people actually keep these as pets too. These roaches are also not very good at climbing slippery surfaces or flying in the case of adult males. So containing them and breeding them yourself is easy and they are mostly a clean feeder to keep. Line a tub with Pine shavings or mulch, add some egg boxes, organic kitchen scraps (Carrots, Peppers, Cabbage etc,) and then add your breeding colony. And watch them go.

The only negative thing about these roaches is that they often burrow immediately when hitting soft substrate. So they need to be placed in a way that a tarantula can detect and catch them quickly, or they burrow within seconds and the tarantula doesn’t even know it’s there. The second problem is that they will sit still for weeks, so a tarantula has no way to detect them and could actually end up starving. So this feeder must be presented in a way that it can be acquired as quickly as possible. Adult males are the best to feed because they can’t sit still and constantly wonder the enclosure, so they’re easily snacked on.

*** Our roaches are checked regularly for mites or nematodes.