Discoid Roaches vs. Termites for Blue Tongue Skinks: An Honest Feeder Comparison

I've kept feeder colonies and fed a lot of different reptiles over the years, and the question in this guide's title comes up constantly from new blue tongue skink owners: discoid roaches or termites? People see termites described online as a "natural, high-protein" food and wonder if they're missing a better option.

So let me give you the honest answer first, and then earn it over the rest of the page: discoid roaches (Blaberus discoidalis) are an excellent staple feeder for blue tongue skinks. Termites are not a realistic feeder at all. This isn't close. One is a clean, easy-to-buy, easy-to-breed insect that an entire hobby runs on; the other is a wood-eating household pest with no dependable supply chain, real contamination risks, and a husbandry burden out of all proportion to the few bugs you'd ever get out of it.

The rest of this guide explains exactly why, with real numbers — protein, fat, chitin, calcium, sizing, feeding frequency — plus how to actually use discoids in a balanced skink diet, how to source them safely, and which "facts" floating around the internet about both insects are simply wrong.

What blue tongue skinks actually eat

Before you can judge any feeder, you have to be honest about the animal. Blue tongue skinks (Tiliqua species — the common northern, Tiliqua scincoides intermedia, is what most keepers have) are omnivores, and that word does real work here. In the wild they're slow-moving, ground-dwelling opportunists that eat whatever they can catch or find: insects, snails, carrion, flowers, fruit, and a lot of leafy plant matter. They are not little monitors. They are not insectivores.

That ecology drives the single most important rule of feeding a skink: a healthy adult diet is roughly half plant matter and half animal protein. The usual working numbers keepers and reptile vets use are around 50% vegetables, 40% protein, and 10% fruit for an adult, shifting more toward protein for fast-growing juveniles. The plant half should lean on dark leafy greens — collard greens, dandelion greens, mustard greens, escarole, turnip greens — with squash, bell pepper, and a little carrot for variety, and small amounts of fruit (berries, mango, melon) as the sugary garnish rather than the meal.

Where do feeder insects fit? They are the protein half of the plate — and only that half. This matters for the whole termites-vs-roaches debate, because the question isn't "which insect can my skink survive on?" No insect should be the entire diet. The real question is: which insect is the best, safest, most practical protein source to build that protein half around? Framed that way, the answer becomes obvious.

For the full reptile-nutrition picture and how calcium fits in, the MSD/Merck Veterinary Manual's reptile nutrition section is a solid, non-commercial reference.

The honest verdict, up front

I'll restate it plainly so there's no ambiguity:

• ◆Discoid roaches: an excellent staple protein feeder. High protein, low fat, soft and low-chitin (easy to digest), available in every size from pinhead nymph to adult, cheap, gut-loadable, breedable at home, and genuinely odor-free. This is the insect to build a skink's protein around.
• ◆Termites: not a viable feeder. No reliable commercial supply, dangerous to harvest from the wild, impractical to culture, and pointless on a per-bug basis. Even where the nutrition sounds fine on paper, you can't actually get them safely or in usable quantity.

Everything below is the evidence. If you only remember one thing, remember that the realistic comparison isn't "roaches vs. termites" — it's "discoid roaches vs. crickets, dubia, and the other standard feeders," with termites not really in the running at all.

What discoid roaches actually are

Discoid roaches are Blaberus discoidalis, a tropical roach native to Central and South America (you'll sometimes see them called "false death's head" roaches). Adults reach roughly two inches, with a flattened oval body that runs tan to dark brown. They go through incomplete metamorphosis — egg, nymph, adult — so nymphs look like small wingless versions of the adults and molt their way up over several months.

A few biology facts matter directly to how good a feeder they are:

• ◆They're live-bearers. Females carry the egg case (ootheca) internally and give birth to live nymphs. For a keeper that means easy, continuous reproduction with no fragile egg cases to incubate or accidentally dry out.
• ◆They can't climb smooth walls. This is one of their best traits and a point worth correcting, because you'll see it stated both ways online. Adult discoids cannot grip smooth vertical surfaces like glass or smooth plastic, so they don't swarm up the sides of a bin or a feeding cup. (They can grip rough surfaces like cardboard and screen, so newborn nymphs still need fine mesh on vents — but you're never going to find an adult discoid scaling your wall.)
• ◆They have a soft, low-chitin body. Compared with crickets and even dubia, discoids have a softer exoskeleton and less chitin. That makes them notably easier to digest — a real advantage for a slow-metabolizing reptile like a skink, and especially for juveniles.

That combination — soft, contained, prolific, hardy — is why discoids are a backbone feeder across the reptile hobby, particularly in the southern US where they're a common legal alternative to dubia.

A note on naming and a source error to ignore

If you've read the older versions of articles on this topic, you may have seen discoids called "Blaptica dubia." That's wrong — Blaptica dubia is the dubia roach, a different (though related) species. Discoids are Blaberus discoidalis. The two are nutritionally similar and both are good feeders, but they aren't the same animal, and dubia are restricted in some places (Florida especially) where discoids are kept instead.

Discoid nutrition for blue tongue skinks

Here's roughly what discoids bring to the plate. Treat these as approximate, as-fed ranges — real values shift with diet, life stage, and source — but the relationships are reliable and they're what should drive your decisions:

• ◆Protein: high, ~20–25% as-fed. This is the whole point of a feeder insect. Discoid protein supports muscle, growth, and steady energy, and a gut-loaded discoid is a genuinely dense protein package for a skink.
• ◆Fat: moderate, ~6–8%. Crucially, this is low enough to be a regular feeder. Unlike high-fat treats (superworms, waxworms), discoids won't push an adult skink toward obesity if fed sensibly. Moderate fat is exactly what you want in a staple.
• ◆Chitin: low; digestibility high. The soft body means less indigestible chitin and a lower impaction risk than hard-shelled feeders — a meaningful safety margin for juveniles and smaller skinks.
• ◆Micronutrients: solid, and improvable. Discoids carry useful B vitamins, magnesium, and zinc, and — this is the lever — whatever you gut-load them with gets passed up to your skink. Feed the roach well and you feed the skink well.

The calcium truth — fixing the biggest myth

Now the correction that matters most, because the older articles get it backwards. You'll see claims that discoid roaches have a "favorable" or "balanced" calcium-to-phosphorus ratio. That is false. Like nearly every feeder insect, discoids are phosphorus-heavy — they contain far more phosphorus than calcium, an inverted ratio that, left uncorrected, contributes to metabolic bone disease over time.

This is not a discoid flaw; it's true of crickets, dubia, mealworms, superworms, hornworms, and termites alike. The one well-known exception among common feeders is black soldier fly larvae, which carry genuinely useful calcium. Everything else needs help.

The fix is simple and non-negotiable: dust feeder insects with a calcium supplement before offering them, and use a calcium-with-D3 or a reptile multivitamin on the schedule your skink needs (D3 frequency depends on your UVB setup — more on that below). Gut-loading improves the overall nutrition of the insect, but it does not fix the calcium ratio. Do both: gut-load for general nutrition, dust for calcium. Anyone telling you discoids don't need dusting because their ratio is "good" is repeating the myth this guide exists to kill.

Why termites don't work as a feeder

On paper, termites don't sound terrible — they're soft-bodied, fairly high in protein (roughly 14–18% by some measures), and they do appear in the wild diets of some skinks. So why am I telling you to forget them? Because "the nutrition isn't crazy" is the least important fact about a feeder. What actually determines whether you can use an insect is supply, safety, and practicality, and termites fail all three.

You can't reliably buy them

There is no real commercial feeder-termite supply the way there is for roaches, crickets, mealworms, and worms. Reptile suppliers stock discoids by the hundreds in every size; nobody is shipping you a tub of feeder termites on a regular schedule. A food source you can't dependably acquire isn't a staple — it isn't even a treat. It's a thought experiment.

Wild-collecting them is genuinely risky

The way most people would actually get termites is by ripping apart a rotting log or stump, and that's exactly where the danger lives. Wild insects can carry pesticides, environmental contaminants, parasites, and pathogens — and termites specifically are associated with wood, including the possibility of chemically treated or rot-treated lumber. Anything the termite has absorbed goes straight into your skink. This is the same reason experienced keepers don't feed wild-caught bugs in general: you cannot verify what's in them. Skip it.

Culturing them is impractical and a little reckless

Could you keep a termite colony to harvest feeders? Technically. Should you? No. Termites need a sealed, consistently humid container with a constant supply of cellulose (untreated wood, cardboard) as both habitat and food, and they're slow, fragile, and easily disrupted. Worse, you'd be deliberately cultivating a wood-destroying insect inside a home — an escape near any structural wood, furniture, or framing is a real hazard, not a hypothetical one. Compare that to a discoid bin, which is a plastic tub with egg flats and a heat mat that quietly runs itself.

The per-bug math is bad

Even setting all that aside, termites are tiny. To make a meal for a hand-sized omnivorous skink, you'd need a lot of them — and they cluster and scatter rather than presenting as catchable prey. A few appropriately sized discoid nymphs deliver more usable, dust-able protein in one go than a frustrating swarm of termites ever would. There's no scenario where the termite route is the easier or better choice for feeding a skink.

The honest summary: termites are interesting trivia about what skinks eat in the wild, not a tool you should reach for in captivity.

Discoid roaches vs. termites: the head-to-head

Here's the comparison laid out plainly. Note that several of the "termite" entries aren't close calls — they're disqualifiers.

The takeaways:

• ◆On nutrition alone, discoids are simply better — more protein, staple-appropriate fat, and the same need for calcium dusting (so termites have no calcium advantage despite old claims to the contrary).
• ◆On everything that determines whether you can actually feed it — availability, safety, practicality, usable quantity — discoids win so decisively that the nutritional comparison is almost beside the point.
• ◆The realistic decision a skink owner faces is discoids vs. other roaches/crickets/worms, not discoids vs. termites.

How discoids stack up against the other real staples

Since the practical decision is "discoids vs. the other feeders you can actually buy" rather than "discoids vs. termites," it's worth seeing the legitimate staples side by side. Again, treat these as approximate as-fed ranges; the relationships are what matter.

What this tells you:

• ◆Discoids and dubia are nearly interchangeable and both make superb staples; choose between them on legality and availability (dubia are restricted in Florida, where discoids fill the gap).
• ◆Black soldier fly larvae are the one feeder that actually carries calcium — the exception to the phosphorus-heavy rule — which makes them a smart thing to rotate in alongside discoids.
• ◆Superworms are a treat, not a staple, because of that ~15% fat.
• ◆Termites land last not because the nutrition is awful but because you can't reliably or safely get them — exactly the point of this guide.

Build the protein half of your skink's diet on discoids (and/or dubia), rotate in black soldier fly larvae and crickets for variety and calcium, and keep the high-fat items occasional.

Sizing discoid roaches to your skink

Getting size right is the difference between a safe meal and a choking or impaction risk. The universal rule:

No feeder should be larger than the width of your skink's head — and for juveniles, keep it closer to the space between the eyes.

Discoids shine here because you can buy or grow them in a full size range:

• ◆Small nymphs for baby and juvenile skinks. Their soft bodies are easy for little jaws and digestive systems to handle.
• ◆Medium to large nymphs for subadults and as a regular size for adults.
• ◆Adult discoids for full-grown skinks that can take a meatier bug.

Because discoids are soft and low-chitin, they're forgiving even when you're between sizes — but don't use that as an excuse to feed an oversized adult roach to a baby skink. Size down when in doubt.

Gut-loading and dusting: doing it right

These are two different jobs, and you need both.

Gut-loading means feeding the roaches well for 24–48 hours before you feed them off, so they're packed with nutrition at the moment your skink eats them. A good gut-load is a dry protein/grain base plus fresh produce — carrots, squash, sweet potato, leafy greens, apple — and clean hydration via water crystals or a damp sponge (never an open dish nymphs can drown in). What the roach ate becomes part of what your skink eats. This is the cheapest, highest-leverage habit in feeder keeping.

Dusting means tossing the feeders in supplement powder right before offering them. This is how you fix the phosphorus-heavy calcium problem that gut-loading can't:

• ◆Plain calcium (no D3): the workhorse, used most often, especially if your skink has good UVB.
• ◆Calcium with D3: on a schedule, to support calcium absorption; how often depends on your UVB setup — skinks with strong UVB need less dietary D3, those with little or none need more. When unsure, ask a reptile vet rather than guessing, since both deficiency and oversupplementation cause problems.
• ◆Reptile multivitamin: periodically (often once a week or per the product directions) for broader micronutrient coverage.

Do this every feeding session and you turn a phosphorus-heavy bug into a balanced meal. Skip it and even perfectly gut-loaded discoids slowly set your skink up for metabolic bone disease. For background on metabolic bone disease and calcium in reptiles, the University of Florida's entomology and wildlife extension resources and a reptile veterinarian are reliable, non-commercial starting points.

How much and how often to feed

Feeding frequency tracks with age, because growth demands protein:

• ◆Hatchlings and juveniles are in fast-growth mode and need protein often — think insects daily to every other day, with the protein share of the diet running higher (closer to 50–60%) than in adults. Offer appropriately sized discoid nymphs they can clear in one sitting, dusted with calcium.
• ◆Subadults transition gradually, with protein offered a few times a week and the plant share of the plate growing.
• ◆Adults lean herbivorous: build most meals around dark leafy greens and vegetables, with protein — discoids and other sources — offered roughly a couple of times a week. Adult skinks are prone to obesity, so portion the protein and watch body condition (a skink with rolls of fat or a fat pad bulging behind the head is overfed).

A practical adult feeding looks like a salad of chopped greens and vegetables most days, with a protein day or two each week where the plate includes several dusted discoids alongside other proteins. Pull uneaten fresh food before it spoils.

Metabolic bone disease: why dusting isn't optional

The reason I keep hammering on calcium is that the consequence of getting it wrong is one of the most common and most preventable diseases in captive reptiles: metabolic bone disease (MBD). It develops when a reptile doesn't get enough usable calcium — whether from a phosphorus-heavy diet, no calcium supplementation, or inadequate vitamin D3/UVB to absorb the calcium it does get. The body responds by pulling calcium out of the bones, which slowly weakens and deforms the skeleton.

In a blue tongue skink, early and progressing signs can include:

• ◆A soft, rubbery, or misshapen jaw, or trouble eating.
• ◆Swollen or bowed limbs, a kinked or lumpy spine, or a misaligned gait.
• ◆Lethargy, reluctance to move, tremors or twitching, and weakness.
• ◆Fractures from normal activity.

MBD is heartbreaking and almost entirely avoidable, and it's why "discoids have a good calcium ratio so you can skip dusting" is such a dangerous myth. The prevention checklist is short:

1. ◆Dust feeders with calcium at feeding (discoids included — they're phosphorus-heavy like the rest).
2. ◆Provide appropriate UVB lighting, which lets the skink synthesize the vitamin D3 needed to actually use calcium, and supplement D3 on a schedule appropriate to that setup.
3. ◆Feed a varied, balanced omnivore diet rather than leaning on any single item.

If you ever see the signs above, that's a reptile-vet visit, not a home fix. For the clinical background, the MSD/Merck Veterinary Manual covers nutritional bone disease in reptiles in depth.

Building the rest of the protein half

Discoids are the staple, but variety matters — both for nutrition and to keep a sometimes-picky skink interested. Around your discoid base you can rotate:

• ◆Other clean feeder insects: dubia roaches (nutritionally near-identical to discoids, where legal), crickets (higher chitin), black soldier fly larvae (the calcium-positive feeder, great in rotation), and the occasional treat like a superworm.
• ◆Higher-value proteins on occasion: a small amount of high-quality, low-fat canned/cooked meat or quality cat/dog food is used by many skink keepers as part of the protein rotation — in moderation, not as a staple.
• ◆Wild-diet items skinks relish: snails (captive-bred/pesticide-free), and the occasional egg.

What you're avoiding is exactly the trap this article warns about: leaning on a single feeder — or worse, chasing an impractical "natural" one like termites — instead of building a sensible, varied, calcium-dusted protein rotation around a reliable staple.

Keeping a discoid colony at home

One of the quiet advantages discoids have over termites (and over buying feeders piecemeal forever) is that you can breed them yourself with almost no effort, and they reproduce slowly enough that they won't explode out of control. A basic colony is an opaque plastic bin with vertical cardboard egg flats, fine-mesh-covered ventilation, a side-mounted heat mat on a thermostat holding the warm zone in the mid-to-high 80s°F, and 60–70% humidity. Feed them the same gut-load you'd feed before offering them off, and harvest the sizes you need.

That's the short version. For the full build — enclosure, heat, humidity, breeding cycle, harvesting, troubleshooting a stalled colony — see my complete discoid roach keeping and breeding playbook. When you want to start or top up a colony, or just buy feeders sized for your skink without the breeding commitment, All Angles Creatures stocks healthy, well-started discoid roaches in a full range of sizes.

Feeding-off logistics: the practical part

Once you've got discoids — bought or bred — the mechanics of actually getting them into your skink are simple, and this is another place they beat termites handily.

• ◆Catch and contain easily. Because adults can't climb smooth surfaces, you shake or scoop the size you want into a smooth-walled cup and they stay put — no escapees skittering across the room. Termites would scatter the instant you opened the container.
• ◆Gut-load 24–48 hours ahead, then dust right before feeding. Keep a small "feeder cup" of the day's roaches, toss in calcium powder, give it a gentle swirl to coat them, and offer.
• ◆Choose your delivery: tong-feeding for control and taming, scatter-feeding for enrichment, or a shallow dish for adults that browse. For an omnivore like a skink, I like tong- or scatter-feeding the protein and leaving the salad in a dish.
• ◆Remove uneaten feeders. A discoid loose in the enclosure overnight is harmless (it won't climb out or damage anything) but better practice is to account for what you offer so you can track intake and avoid overfeeding.

The whole routine takes a minute or two and is genuinely pleasant — quiet, odor-free, no chasing. It's the kind of low-friction husbandry that makes you consistent, which is what actually keeps an animal healthy over years.

The economics, honestly

A quick word on cost, because "termites are expensive and hard to get" deserves a flip side. Discoids are cheap in absolute terms and get cheaper the more you commit:

• ◆Buy-as-you-go is perfectly fine for one skink — a tub of appropriately sized discoids lasts a while and costs little, and you skip all colony maintenance.
• ◆Breeding your own turns the cost curve down further. A starter colony has an upfront cost (bin, heat mat, thermostat, the roaches), but once it's producing it feeds your animal for the cost of vegetable scraps and a little electricity. Because discoids breed at a measured pace, the colony stays manageable rather than overrunning you.

Either way you're spending less, with less hassle and less risk, than you would chasing an unreliable novelty feeder. The math, like everything else here, points at discoids.

Sourcing feeders safely

Whether you breed or buy, two habits protect your skink:

1. ◆Buy from a clean, reputable feeder source. Healthy discoids are active and glossy across a range of sizes. A good supplier keeps colonies properly, which means low risk of mites, mold, or — critically — pesticide exposure. This is the single biggest reason to buy captive-raised feeders instead of collecting wild insects: you can trust what's in them.
2. ◆Never feed wild-caught bugs. This is where termites really fall apart, but it applies to any wild insect: pesticides, contaminants, and parasites are invisible and can be fatal. The convenience of "free bugs from the yard" is never worth it.

When new feeders arrive, give them a day to settle, gut-load them, then feed off — and if you're adding to an established colony, quarantine the newcomers for a couple of weeks first to avoid importing mites or mold.

Feeding behavior and enrichment

One thing the wild-diet romance around termites gets half-right is that how a skink eats matters, not just what. Blue tongue skinks are slow, deliberate, ground-level foragers — they don't chase fast prey, they trundle up to something and eat it. That behavior is part of why discoids are such a natural fit and part of why a feeder's "huntability" is worth thinking about.

Discoids are large enough to be obvious, slow enough on smooth surfaces to be catchable, and substantial enough that catching one feels worthwhile to the skink. That triggers genuine foraging behavior without the frustration of a feeder that scatters and hides. You can lean into this for enrichment:

• ◆Scatter-feed appropriately sized discoids in the enclosure so the skink has to find and work for them, rather than dropping everything in a bowl.
• ◆Tong-feed to control intake, build a feeding routine, and (over time) help with taming and trust.
• ◆Tuck feeders near hides or under loose substrate so the skink uses its nose and engages its natural rooting behavior.

Enrichment isn't fluff — a skink that gets to forage is a more active, mentally engaged, and often better-conditioned animal. Discoids support that; a swarm of tiny termites, even if you could source them, would not.

Troubleshooting common feeding problems

A few issues come up again and again with skinks and feeders:

• ◆The skink won't eat insects, only "wants" treats. Usually a sign of past overfeeding of high-value or fatty items. Hold the line: offer the staple insects (dusted discoids), don't cave to a hunger strike of a day or two in an otherwise healthy adult, and reintroduce variety once it's eating staples again. Warm, moving feeders (scatter or tong-fed) tempt better than motionless ones in a dish.
• ◆The skink is getting fat. Very common in adults. Cut protein frequency, lean harder on leafy greens and vegetables, drop high-fat items entirely for a while, and reassess body condition over weeks. A fat pad bulging behind the head or a tail with no taper is your cue.
• ◆It refuses vegetables. Common in skinks that were raised insect-heavy. Mix finely chopped greens with a little of the protein it loves, reduce the insect portion gradually, and keep offering fresh salad daily — many skinks come around with persistence.
• ◆Regurgitation after feeding. Often a temperature problem — skinks need adequate warmth to digest. Check that basking and ambient temps are correct before suspecting the food, and avoid handling right after a meal.
• ◆You're not sure how much to feed. Watch body condition over time rather than counting bugs rigidly. A well-conditioned skink is filled-out but not bulging, with a tail that tapers and no fat rolls.

Notice that none of these problems are solved by an exotic feeder. They're solved by sensible portions, a balanced omnivore diet built on a reliable staple, correct husbandry, and patience.

What blue tongue skinks eat in the wild — and what that tells us

Blue tongue skinks range across Australia, New Guinea, and nearby islands (with the Indonesian and Australian forms being the common pet types), and in the wild they're famously indiscriminate omnivores. Field diets include beetles and other insects, snails and slugs, caterpillars, carrion, flowers, berries, fruit, and a good deal of vegetation — yes, sometimes including termites and ants alongside everything else.

It's tempting to read "they eat termites in the wild" as "I should feed termites." But the real lesson of the wild diet is the opposite of single-feeder thinking: wild skinks eat enormous variety, with no single item dominating, and a large plant component. A wild skink crossing a termite mound also eats beetles in the next hour and flowers after that. Our job in captivity isn't to replicate one wild snack — it's to replicate the balance: a varied, omnivorous diet that's roughly half plants, with protein from clean, safe, available insects.

That's exactly what a discoid-based rotation delivers. It honors the wild diet's principle (variety and balance) without chasing a wild diet's incidental item (termites) that we can't source safely. The wild diet argues for discoids-plus-variety, not for termites.

Common myths, cleared up

A few persistent claims worth correcting directly:

• ◆"Discoids have a great calcium ratio, so you don't need to dust." False. They're phosphorus-heavy like nearly all feeders. Always dust with calcium. (Black soldier fly larvae are the calcium exception, not roaches.)
• ◆"Termites are a better, more natural protein." Misleading. Skinks do eat termites in the wild, but in captivity you can't reliably or safely source them, and discoids beat them on protein anyway. Natural-sounding doesn't mean practical or safe.
• ◆"Skinks can live on insects." No. They're omnivores; an insects-only diet causes obesity and deficiencies. Insects are the protein half of a half-plants diet.
• ◆"All feeder insects are nutritionally the same." No. Protein, fat, chitin, and calcium vary widely — which is the entire reason discoids (high protein, moderate fat, low chitin) outclass both high-fat treats and hard-to-source novelties.
• ◆"Discoids climb out of everything." No. Adults can't grip smooth surfaces. Contain the pinhead nymphs with fine mesh and you'll never see an escapee adult.

The bottom line

For a blue tongue skink, feed discoid roaches and don't bother with termites. Discoids give you high protein, staple-appropriate fat, a soft low-chitin body that's easy and safe to digest, every size you could need, a clean and odor-free presence, and the option to breed your own — all from a supply chain that actually exists. Dust them with calcium every time (because, like virtually all feeders, they're phosphorus-heavy), gut-load them well, size them to your skink, and serve them as the protein half of a diet that's otherwise built on dark leafy greens and vegetables.

Termites, for all the natural-diet romance around them, are something you can't reliably buy, shouldn't safely collect, and have no good reason to culture. The real comparison was never close — and now you know exactly why.

Want to go deeper on the staple itself? Read my full discoid roach keeping and breeding playbook, or browse the complete feeder insect care library for hornworms, silkworms, waxworms, and the rest of the rotation.