roaches - Page 3

Lankyrob · 10-14-11, 12:23 PM

Lol - yeah i thought the thread got a little of track!!

stephanbakir · 10-15-11, 06:41 PM

I've had my colony for quite some time and it was doing fantastic, almost at 2000... till last night... I generally keep my roach enclosure on my retic cage because it puts their ambient where I want it, but last night I had a brain fart and put the box of roaches on the sav cage.... I'm now down to about 30 healthy roaches and 200 twitching ones that can't really walk....
Lesson learned.

infernalis · 10-15-11, 06:51 PM

shovel a bunch of the twitching ones to the sav, let your lizard have a chow fest.

**millertime89** · 10-15-11, 07:16 PM

and get a video!

stephanbakir · 10-15-11, 09:46 PM

Hes still a wee one, he can only handle 2-3 large roaches, the small roaches turned into a roach paste at the bottom of the tub.

DeesBalls · 10-24-11, 07:45 PM

OKay, so i got a mlae and female and some babies at the expo. can i put them all in the same tupperwear tub i got? and i plan on putting egg crates and some egg crates with some oranges....
what do i do for?....
water?
substrate?
other food?

thanks!!

ZARADOZIA · 10-25-11, 04:18 AM

Pet stores sell gutload gel and dry cricket food. I have "Fluker's Cricket Quencher Calcium fortified" to keep the crickets watered, that way they don't drown. The dry food is also by Fluker's. The label reads safe for all feeder insects. Costs about 8.00 USD a jar. I don't see why that wouldn't work.

Lankyrob · 10-25-11, 04:24 AM

Put all in together they live fine like that. Egg crates are great for them to house up in. I use Bug Gel for water and Bug Grub for food for mine. You can use fresh fruit and veg for both water and food but with my memory i foget it is in there and then it goes mouldy which threatens the colony as well as creating a mess/smell.

I also feed them the left overs in the bottom of cereal boxes/any that daughter drops on floor (that the dog doesnt get too first!!). Anything dry will last much longer without mould so it creates less of an issue for me.

NEVER clean the container, the young roaches feed on the adult poo so if you clean the mess out of the container then the young will die off. I found my colony was barely growing at all at first but as the "mess" has built up in the bottom the colony is growing quicker and quicker and we are able to feed off more and more whilst maintaining numbers.

Also when feeding them off i feed of more males than females, one male will "service" around 15 females or so. So the by keepiing a 1male to 10females or so you are vreating a efficient colony.

infernalis · 10-25-11, 05:01 AM

I always hold out on all big breeder females, you can tell on sight, they look like queens of the colony, shiny dark coloured shell with bright caramel/orange spots.

I never feed them to anything, they kick out live young like little bug factories at that stage.

candyraver69 · 10-27-11, 03:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ZARADOZIA

Pet stores sell gutload gel and dry cricket food. I have "Fluker's Cricket Quencher Calcium fortified" to keep the crickets watered, that way they don't drown. The dry food is also by Fluker's. The label reads safe for all feeder insects. Costs about 8.00 USD a jar. I don't see why that wouldn't work.

That stuff is good but some of the stuff recommended earlier on in the thread is a bit cheaper. You can mix jurassical in with the water you make up crystals with if you want high calcium crystals

Feeding them fresh fruit at least once in a while is important to keep them breeding at their full potential though. It also depends what you are feeding them to. For reptiles high calcium gutload is great, but I for example feed cat food because it's low in calcium and high in protein which is what my T's need. Too much calcium has potential to harm T's.

I've been doing a small colony to feed my T's, and compare to crickets, it is SO simple. I wish I knew about dubia roaches when I had geckos. No more going to get crickets twice a week, because forget about those loud smelly things breeding in my house! Dubias are quiet, don't really smell anywhere close to what crickets do, and even if you drop one, its pretty easy to catch it. And my rats LOVE them for an occasional treat, hahaha! I started with 4 adults and 25 mixed nymphs not too long ago and easily have 200 in there now even with feeding babies to my T's.

And since I didn't see anyone post pics of what they do with the food, just the upper portion of the container... (and yes it's about time to replace crystals, they look gross). Not sure if you can see, but I used sandpaper to sand the containers so they can crawl in and out

and some more pics:

ZARADOZIA · 10-27-11, 05:20 PM

My husband said no to roaches. Crickets is it. I am breeding them I think...I have more now than what I started with...lmao

candyraver69 · 10-28-11, 06:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ZARADOZIA

My husband said no to roaches. Crickets is it. I am breeding them I think...I have more now than what I started with...lmao

Hahaha! It took some serious convincing for me to sway my husband. But fyi if you are trying to breed crickets, stick a small tub of moist peat in the tub for them to lay eggs. It took me a while to figure out what I was doing wrong when I was trying for the geckos.