I've been feeding dog food, as well as all sorts of different fruits and produce to roaches for more than 30 years now. I had 18 species in 40 bins at one point in time and bred them by the millions for years. I'm down to only 3 species currently. Hissers, dubia, and B. lateralis. Why do you think dog food is bad for the roaches? I've fed these roaches to all kinds of lizards, turtles, tarantulas, scorpions, chickens, hedgehogs, and I'm sure there are other insectivores over the years I can't remember.i build all of our enclosures myself here. i only use xpvc now. we have a large ish facility. dragons are only one of the species we have here. the issue with dubia is most people do not feed them properly then they maintain the uric acid levels this is the reason for the gout issue. if they are being used as a feeder the ONLY things they should be fed is what the dragons should be eating. no fruit, no berries, nothing like carrots etc. gut loading means feeding them things the dragons are supposed to have. this is rare for people to do. supers also should be part of a varied diet you should never feed only one insect. simple as that. which means there is no true "staple" but if someone had to pick one i hate to say crickets are the best readily available (i hate crickets personally but they should be part of the diet) it doesnt matter if dubia can eat more. the issue here is people feed lets say 15 crickets. so they think they should feed 15 dubia. no. the dubia should be fed in proportion to the higher protein levels. so depending on feeder size you need to adjust the amount you feed. most people do not understand that nor do many want to. they just say well they are still hungry so they let them eat more. we see some SEVERELY OBESE dragons come on here from people and the main diet is 99% of the time only roaches. it takes forever for a dragon who is that heavy to loose that weight and can cause death (heart issues etc). true that its sometimes hard to find other feeders ill agree there. silkworms are for all intent and purposes prob the best overall feeder (imo) but they are impossible for most people to properly keep and breed. we breed them here along with pretty much every other feeder we use. im not saying never to feed dubia but one needs to know how to properly feed them in PROPORTION. i see WAYYYYY to many times people say oh just feed the dubia dog food. no. never. do not do this. it will not only be bad for the dragon but also for the roaches. and then if fed dog food they should NEVER be used as feeders for the dragons unless you clean them our for a long enough time.the the uric acid still remains an issue for the roaches. as far as sand im strictly talking about dragons not geckos etc. play sand is fine to use. if you are a brand new keeper i do recc tile or paper towels. but play sand is fine if you have a correct setup and temps. we have been doing this over 30 years now.
I've never fed them to bearded dragons or anything else as a sole food, but I've fed lots of them to lots of beardies, chameleons, monitors, skinks, leopard geckos, cichlids, arowanas, and more. All roaches of all species were fed dog kibble, cat kibble, and "wet" produce of one sort or another, like carrots, potato, oranges, strawberry, banana, apples, greens of all types, soaked leftover Mazuri tortoise chow, and whatever other leftover food I needed to get rid of. I've had the dubia and lateralis colonies going for more than 10 years, and the hissers since 1992. I did this with all the blaberus species, lobsters, giant lobsters, A. tesselata, Blatta orientalis, and many more. If dog food is bad for roaches, nobody told all of mine.