I've heard different schools of thought on how to breed roaches. Interestingly, the hands-off method really does seem to work best. Get a nice tall bin, with very hard plastic. That Rubbermade type stuff tends to get porous when exposed to heat for prolonged periods, and then it becomes climbable. Even when it's smooth, there still tends to be a ledge around the upper rim, and if they can get to that via egg-crate they can still reach the upper crack, so the taller the better. Plus, more margin of error as far as thermal gradient goes- just like with lizards. Perforate the top slightly, add a bunch of vertical egg falts, and put a UTH under one half. Use a butter lid or something as a food dish at the cool end, and feed them an appropriate dry gutload as their main diet. DO NOT MIST. DO NOT PROVIDE WATER, with or without a sponge. DO NOT PROVIDE GEL, except under unusual circumstances when you don't happen to have anything else handy. Their moisture should come from fruits and vegetables, which they will eat quite readily if it is their primary water source, although if the whole setup is muggy they can actually be damned picky. Go heavy on herp-friendly vegs such as zuchini and sweet potato, although sometimes it's kind of creepily fun to watch them go crazy for other favorites, such as banana peels. They don't really like the darker greens, but will devour the darker lettuces- and, yes, old wilted vegies that were originally purchased for the lizards are fine. So is over-ripe fruit. I'm used to my colony and I have a feel for its rythms, so I'll also offer them leftover meat products, but if you're having trouble with yours, don't. I do it as a frugality thing, not as a biological necessity. Also, DO NOT USE SUBSTRATE. And do not let the built-up waste in the bottom collect moisture. An easy way to keep the bottom dry and easy to spot-clean (I have no cleaning schedule, but when the dried stool gets deep enough to be annoying when I try to catch a roach it's time to spot-clean that section. When an egg-flat physically deteriorates, it's time to replace it) is to periodically rotate the bin so that the cool end becomes the warm end and vice versa. A mucky mess quickly becomes dry and granular after a few hours over mild heat. The biggest problems you'll have using the dry-tub system are
a. A higher infant mortaliy rate, but the adults will produce so many anyway that it's not a big deal, and
b. Wing-nibbling, if you guess wrong on how much moist produce to provide. But the wings are just chiton anyway. It's really just cosmetic damage that does not seem to interfere with them doing their roachly tnings, including reproduction.
also, c: there's always the possibility that something bad will get into your colony and you'll have to flush all the bugs and start over, but if you're not gratuitously feeding them weird exotic raw protein sources you ought to be fine.
Just try to give as much produce a day as you can without steaming or sogging things up, skip a day or two when you overdue it, and take the same "generous unless in doubt, in which case skip a day" attitude about dry food, and they'll be fine. I mean, that pretty much exhausts everything I know about roaches, but it works. A lot of the fancier, higher-maintenance styles didn't, so conclude what you will.
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0.1 2006 Western Hognose (Bebe)
0.1 age unknown Cane Toad (Hengo)
0.1 2005 White-Banded Sheen Skink (Minerva)
1.0 2006 Northern Diamondback Terrapin (Queequeg)
1.0 2006 Madagascan Speckled "Hognose" (Sigmund)
1.0 2008 Bullsnake (Winkle)
1.2 2008 Eastern Collared Lizards (Pancho, Lupe, and Chica)
0.0.2 2009 Eastern Collared hatchlings

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