Reptile & Amphibian Forums

i've tried 3 times to get a good colony of crickets going but to no avail. all three times they were all dead in a week or two, and the smell was horrific. my garage still smells like ammonia. obviously i'm doing something wrong but i dont care, i'm not dealing with crickets again. i'd like to know more about roaches. i've heard Orange head, orange spot, 4-spot, discoids, and death heads are good non-climbers.

i have some unique requirements though. i need animals that love humidity. the humidity in my garage is usually around 70 to 80%, and if i keep them outside, ants get them or the cage fills up with water etc.

i would prefer it if they couldn't survive in my location without care. i've read that most roaches wouldn't survive most places, but here in florida its warm nearly all the time.

i'm also looking at super worms. can they handle humidity? i dont think they smell too much, do they? thanks for your time

Superworms can handle alot of conditions. They've weathered mine here in Ohio... I just got a colony going. Your only problem with Superworms is the work it takes to pupate them. After that though they kind of do things themselves without alot of involvement. I've got at least 1000 growing supers right now and more eggs hatching daily.

I'm just getting some superworms going now,they are harder to get to pupate.
I've got about 20 or so to pupate and am waiting on about 100 more,several of them do die when you place them under stress to pupate.
I've had pretty good success raising crickets and excellent success with large and giant mealworms.
How many superworms did you start off with and how many eggs do they lay?
Thanks Tony

I pupated about 30 supers at first and let them breed. I'm getting to the point where I need more beetles now....so pretty soon it'll be time to stress induce pupation in some of my larger superworms. I don't need mass amounts of them which is why I start off with so few.

How many superworms did you use to get the 30 that pupated?
Do you have many die when you stress them,i've had quite a few die myself.
From the 30 that you pupated how many eggs did they lay and how many worms die the eggs produce.
I have about 30 pupated now and about 50 or more stressing now.
What do you stress them in,i use 1 of those tackel box lure compartments with the dividers.
Thanks Tony

I think I used about 40.. Lost 10 during the stress....had lost more when I tried it using substrate in their individual cubicles.. So I just tossed them into the individual compartments and stuck them in a room temp dark place. I keep them in an embroidery floss box that I've melted small ventilation holes into over each compartment. I'm not exactly sure how many eggs I got but I have well over 500 baby supers in various sizes right now. In one drawer and another drawer with more...from the same original beetles.

There are many non-climbing roach species that would work great. They are good breeders and some of the best feeders in my opinion. I have talked to several people in Flordia who keep and breed roaches.
James

I too had problems with crickets, so I decided to try breeding roaches. After some research, I decided I wanted a non-climber and got some that was affordable at the time I was looking. I ended up with little more than a dozen Orange Spotted Roaches (Blaptica dubia) which where near fully grown. It took a month before I saw any babies and it is another month later now and there are more babies and the ones from a month ago are growing. The only downside to roaches is that they take so long to mature to be able to breed. Also, when you buy them, be sure to find out if they are near adults or still babies, so you can take a guess when you might have baby roaches. But I hear once established in large colonies, they are great. They are so easy to care for versus crickets. Kinda as easy as mealworms. Roaches even smell pleasant compared to crickets.

As for what to get when you are in Florida, talk to roach sellers. These roaches typically like it hot and humid. So if that is your common weather, they probably can thrive if they escape, but they have a long life cycle. Here in California, we have it hot, but dry, so if they got out, they probably wouldn't do so well.