Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello!

I am a new Madagascar hissing cockroack keeper! I inherited some old roaches last year - I put them in a fishtank that had a heating pad beneath it, along with some newspaper for the bottom and some egg cartons for shelter. They didn't really reproduce much - I had maybe 5 to start and maybe a dozen this spring.

Enter an unseasonably warm summer.

I knew the roaches had increased in number, and by golly I got about 50 big and beautiful adults now. I found this out last night, when I changed their tank. And, when I changed the tank I shook the roaches off the sticks I had in the tank, and then soaked the sticks in bleach water in my bath tub - it was the only thing to accomdate the size of the sticks.

Baby roaches came out from under the bark - I felt terrible, and rather than let them die a horrible bleach death I poked them with my salad tongs (aka roach picker-upper) and that was that. I drained the tub, picked out the sticks this morning after they had dried in the tub all night, and didn't think twice about it -until my husband called me today to report he had a roach visitor in the tub when he pulled up the plug!

The rescued baby is now back with the colony. I worry that the bleach treatment will cause a problem and maybe this baby is injured also and somehow survived the salad tong assault. My biggest worry is my husband, however, who is worried we will now have to exterminate the house!

These roaches are sold in petstores near my house and are commonly available in MN.

Do I have anything to worry about?

I have located a petstore to take most of my adults off my hands - they are so big and robust! I plan on keeping a few, they are so nice to have around - but I may have trouble keeping any at all if my husband is not quickly reassured that we won't be infested with roaches from the sewer!

It is very unlikely that they will survive in the drain of the bathtub. Without adequate temperatures, and a decent food source, they will most likely perish.

All agree, they won't survive if they did manage to escape.

I am concerned now for my entire colony - as my husband put the one he found back into the colony. Is that safe? Water under the bridge now, but I don't want my roaches to fall ill!

I did bring a number of adults to the petstore to turn in -I explained about my OOOPs breeding and they said it was OK to turn them in, so I kept back some nice large males and the teeny babies I could not easily gather, and grabbed as many of the ladies as I could. The petstore roaches looked so dry and dull compared to my home grown roaches! Mine were good sized (5" or so) with deep, dark vibrant color and shiny bright shells! Not sure what the pet store feeds their roaches, but mine sorta ate compost. What I mean is, I just gave them the greens from carrots and the carrot peels, culled salad greens or even dandelion greens from the yard, plus a dog biscuit now and then (and then there was that dried out French bread!) Variety must be the spice of life, because my roaches looked magnificent and robust compared to the pet shop stock.

If the nymph survived for more than 2-3 days, it should do alright. I doubt if the nymph will cause problems with the others, unless it was exposed to pesticides.

As far as the petshop roach quality goes, you can emphasize your techniques of keeping roaches to them, so that their "roach quality" health improves. You can also search the net for some roach/Hisser caresheets to give to the petshop (if they have enough initiative) to read.

Goodluck