Roach colonies

elportoed · Roach colonies

I have 2 roach colonies. One's dubias which is very easy to maintain. I started with 200 from DavidRS stock for about 2 months. I keep them in the garage where it gets hot during the day but cooler at night. I see a few small nymphs, so I guess they are breeding. The dubias container got a faint smell to it, nothing offensive. It seems that they are more vegeterains than carnivores. They clean up the fruits and veggie and cereals, but seldom touch the cat food, unless there's no more cereals left. I haven't fed them to the Ts just yet. I'll wait until there are a few more of them before I do that.

I think I probably can keep them in my living room or other part of the house, and the smell won't bother me.

The other colony, lateralis, just got a couple of thousand of them a couple of weeks ago. Similar set up, these guys eat everything, they prefer cat food to cereals. But they stink, not as bad as cricket but they certainly are smelly, certainly not the ones to be kept inside the house. Can they be safely left with the Ts, while the Ts are molting? Not that I would intentionally leave them in, just that I found a couple of little ones burrowed under the substrate.

For those who keep lobsters, what's your take on them? Are they as smelly as lateralis (if you happen to keep lateralis too)? I like the fact that they are prolific breeders. The only ding that I have against them is that they do climb, which means greater chance for them to escape.

How do you control the population in the colony, not feed as often, or feed off more females? I guess one way is to keep them cooler too, but sometimes that can't be helped since they are in the garage and summer is coming.

cacoseraph

lobs are my staple

i hve never gotten my dang lateralis to take off enough to know if they stink or not

i like the way my lobs smell. kinda earthy with a hint of repugnatorial secretion Smile

i prekill/mangle just about all the lobs i feed out, to get around the glasswalking problems

elportoed

I don't have much luck with prekill, except when they are tiny slings, 1/2 or smaller. The bigger ones tend to ignore the prekill. Although on occasion, I'd see them kill their food and not eat right away. But the dead cricket would get eaten later.

I'm more worried about the ones in the colony getting out. I know, there should be a grease barrier on the edge of the tub. But few may get out.

cacoseraph

grease sucks

i like olive oil MUCH better!

and i will NEVER EEEEVER use vaseline again!

you can always put a lid on it hehehe. i'm not tellin gyou to shut up heh! i mean you can put a top on the container. that is what i do with my main container. just make sure there is decent vent cuz thousands of roaches make funky moisture problems in bad vent containers

DavidRS

In my experience, lateralis doesn't have an odor any stronger than other roaches. I have a feeling that it may be coming from uneaten food. If I had to pick one feeder roach, it would be lateralis, but I just can't find the sweet spot of temperature and humidity so my colony really takes off.

Dubias are my 2nd favorite, and are reproducing like crazy in my state-of-the-art breeding facility (a rubbermaid tub with a heat lamp out on my balcony).

After winning a colony of lobsters at one of our BBQ's, they would be my favorite if they couldn't climb. All my bugs seem to like their soft, squishy texture. They have a distinctive aroma, but not offensive.

TheJackal

this is very informative guys! I am just now considering investing in a colony, perhaps B dubia

TheJackal

also how much would b dubias cost?

cacoseraph

price in our hobby is highly variable

dealers tend to be more constant in prices, but generally higher than hobbyists (though some hobbyists haven't a clue and ask for WAY too much)

you could expect to pay around ~$1 per adult dubia. you could probably score a mixed size starter culture of 50-100 dubia for $25-$35. that would include some adults but mostly nymphs of various sizes

if you wait you can probably find 200-300 mixed size including some adults for $40-$50. but you might have to wait to find someone who is selling off excess from their person colony and mostly wants to reduce headcount

Ronin

TheJackal - check out our very own Crazy Dave's Inverts at crazydavesinverts.com. 100 mixed is $20 which is the best price you'll find out there (especially for dealers).

Celeste

Just thought I'd toss this out there:

I started feeding my Tiger Hissers monkey chow originally, because that was what I happened to have around the house at the time. And they have done so well on it, that that is *all* I feed them (except for the occasional treat of apple, banana, or carrot or something). I've had the Tiger Hissers for almost three years now, and the colony has grown slowly and steadily over that time to where I sold off quite a few of them at the March BBQ. I am currently keeping 7 different roach species, and they all get just monkey chow (except for the Cave roaches and Giant Cave roaches, which Francisco tells me need fruit in their diets).

So I highly recommend the monkey chow and occasional small quantities of fruit. Warmth and moderate humidity. And mine all seem to be doing great (and breeding like crazy now that the days are getting warmer). It might be my imagination, but I think the Tiger Hissers I have curently are even larger and more colorful than their predecessors.

All of them are in the living room, and there is no smell (from the roaches, at least...) except when the occasional Tiger Hisser dies -- those things REALLY stink when they die! Like a dead rodent or something.

But then, too, I don't have hundreds or thousands -- probably only around 160-170 roaches total (all 7 species) at the moment. The largest groups currently being the dubias and the Tiger Hissers at around 50-60 (of all sizes) in each colony.

-- Celeste

cacoseraph

i have 2000+ lobsters in a tub and they smell kinda nice to me =P

Celeste

Yeah -- I had 1000 lobsters for a couple of weeks... They smelled almost good enough to *eat*! ;->

-- C

TheJackal

Thats just wrong... ::lol::

elportoed

Dave, what do you feed your lateralis? The cat food that I feed them do have a certain smell but the colony itself has a different distinct smell (not a good one). I usually give them fruits and veggies that last a couple of days, and then change out with new stuff. But I do leave extra dry food in a different plate, so they stay dry.

Celeste, what is monkey chow? What's in it? And where do you get that?

Celeste

elportoed

Thanks, Celeste. I'll look into it.

I just realized that the reason that I keep roaches is to save money on crickets, instead I'm spending more on other stuff to keep the roach colonies going. You just can't win...

Celeste

I think a lot of people raise roaches instead of crickets just to cut down on the smell from the crickets...

-- C

cacoseraph

and to control the source of your pets' food!

petstore crickets seem to randomly just kill ppl's spiders or introduce mites

sick4x4

heres my new feeder colonys....

Arachnocat

I've discovered that parrot food is really cheap and roaches love it. Especially those little crunchy fruit things. You can also find dried veggie flakes for parrots that roaches go nuts for. This weekend I picked up a bag of powdered baby bird food from the bargain bin at petco. My roaches really like it.

elportoed · B lateralis update

The B lateralis colony is doing pretty well. Still in the garage, no heater of any kind, the hotest the temp ever was 82 deg F and that's during the day. I am seeing a lot of tiny ones in the colony which is a good sign (the colony is a bit over 2 months). The smell is getting better, I meant not as offensive as before. I don't know if I am getting used to them or what.

The coolest thing is that I accidently found out that you can leave the lateralis in the container with the spiders while they go through molting process. I have a couple of 1.5 in B albopilosums that I didn't expect to go molting but did, with good size (.75 in) lateralis in the container eacg with them. They molted without any incident. By the time I found out, the albos already molted a few days. So I didn't remove the roaches. The lateralis got eaten a few days later.

Best Roach

My experience with lobsters was a good one. They breed FAST, faster than lateralis even. They are very soft shelled, and my herps loved them when I had them. The downside is, they have an odor and can climb. I did have several esapes overs the 6 months or so I kept them.

If you already have lateralis, then there should be no need for lobsters.

noexcuse4you

Ogershok taught me the key to kickstarting a roach colony...FISH FOOD!!! Its a little pricey, but ever since I've fed them fish food, they've been breeding like crazy! Bananas and oranges are great as well! There's a local market that has them for sale in the bargain bin for really cheap when they go just a little too bad for most people. I started with lobsters, but they stink really bad. I keep a few adults around for the nymphs. My teeny tiny slings looooove freshly born nymphs! I think I have about 1 or 2 more months before my dubia colony gets going well enough to feed off the males. We'll see....

elportoed · B lateralis report

I have been having problems with the lateralis colony and not too happy to report that it may never recover.

I had mites, that's on another thread. So I only fed enough for them to finish in a few hours, leaving no food inside the tub, improved ventilation, etc. The mites were gone.

They stop reproducing, no more little nymphs running around. So I figured too dry, closed up some ventilation to increase humidity. Nymphs reappeared. Then the container smelt a little funky, moldy like. So I replaced the eggcrates, increase ventilation, the smell were gone so were the nymphs. How hard is that to keep them breeding? Apparently not as easy as I thought.

Lateralis can also climb some (and they said they can't climb). Since I knew they were fast, I doubled the containers 10 gal inside 20 gal tub so to catch the ones that get accidentally dropped. When I ventilate to get rid of the mold, I removed the inside lid and kept the outside lid closed (they were both screened). The setup for the inner tub has eggcrates standing vertically cut to the height where it's about 4 in lower than the rim.

I found a few in the bottom of the outside tub, they must have climbed or jumped out. Luckily, they can't climb out the outer tub because of the lid. So the vaseline gets applied on the inner rim. I found this teflon based, food grade grease selling at my local hardware store which may be the same product as the bug barrier. But I have nothing to test it to. Come to think of it, if they escape, they probably wouldn't survive nor reproduce in my garage. But with my luck, they might find a sweet spot in my house to start their own colony.

The dubias are now the staple. I only started with 200 from DaveRS earlier this year, and they don't reproduce that fast. I really have no idea how many there are in the tub. I am adding an infrared light to go on at night so it'll be warm all day long, hopefully that'll increase the production some. And more may be add more to the colony.

Roach colonies

B lateralis update

B lateralis report