Feeder Insects in North Florida

This page is for keepers in Jacksonville, Tallahassee, Gainesville, Pensacola and the Panhandle.

The Rule That Applies Everywhere in Florida

Before anything regional: dubia roaches are restricted in Florida and discoid roaches are not. Live arthropods fall under the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, not the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, and the permit involved is not issued to keepers or feeder sellers.

This is the single most consequential fact for a Florida keeper, and it is why a Florida reptile shop stocks discoids where an out-of-state one stocks dubia. The agency, the statute and the reasoning are set out in why discoid roaches are legal in Florida.

North Florida is the part of the state that actually gets cold, and that changes the shipping problem from the one the rest of Florida has.

Winter Is a Real Variable Here

Freezes reach the Panhandle and the Jacksonville and Tallahassee areas most winters. For live insects that matters in two directions:

• In transit, a cold snap can chill a package below what the animals tolerate. Cold kills more slowly than heat, but it still kills.
• At home, an unheated garage that works fine as feeder storage in Orlando will drop below usable temperatures here. Black soldier fly activity falls off sharply as it cools, and a colony in an unheated space stops producing.

The Two-Season Approach

North Florida keepers effectively run two regimes. In summer the problem is the same heat everyone else has. In winter it is the opposite, and the fix is the opposite: insulate the shipment, order for a delivery day you will be home for, and move any colony indoors.

The one thing that does not change with latitude is the law. The dubia restriction is statewide.

Ordering Live Feeders

All Angles Creatures ships live feeders across Florida from Altamonte Springs. What to buy is covered in the individual guides — discoid roaches, how to feed them, and the storage guide that keeps them alive once they arrive.