Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I am having great success in breeding the orange-head, orange-spot, and lobster roach. I have had hopes of being able to have an abundance of feeders when my MHD eggs started hatching.

Well, the time has come, I have 33 3-wk-old babies. Mind you these guys are 3-1/4" long and 1-2 grams each fresh from the shell. They take 2 years to mature so they don't grow that fast, in other words, they are still really tiny.

So, how can I catch the tiny little roach babies? They are awfully fast and I have tried several methods but always the tiny ones seem to disappear and what I wind up with are all too big for my babies, even though the babies appear to be all head!

My 33 babies have already depleted the supply of appropriately sized mealies from my colonies and I have to wait for the tiniest ones to get big enough to feed off. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Just to give an idea of needed size here are some pics of my little ones:

Here they are fresh from the shell and still pipping. The clay dish is a 4" diameter!

It's obvious which one of these two has been eating!

Thanks in advance,

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Marcia - FroggieB Dragons
www.froggieb.com/MHDHome.html

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>>So, how can I catch the tiny little roach babies? They are awfully fast and I have tried several methods but always the tiny ones seem to disappear and what I wind up with are all too big for my babies, even though the babies appear to be all head!

It probably sounds overly simple but I just knock a bunch onto my hand and flick off the large ones. My baby lobsters tend to congregate under the layers in the tub and I can pretty much find 'pockets' of them in the population. Often too the moms have the babies on the tub sides and I can scoop them off with a sheet of paper.
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Sonya

Haven't we warned you about tampering with the structure of a chaotic system?
Mrs. Neutron

Thanks! So, do you just drop them in and let the babies have at it and trust that none will escape? My hubby would have a fit if he saw any loose! I was sort of thinking I could maybe set up a feeding tub with a barrier at the top and move the babies to it to feast on roaches.

Any and all advice, tricks or ideas would be great!
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Marcia - FroggieB Dragons
www.froggieb.com/MHDHome.html

groups.yahoo.com/group/agamid/join
(click the link to join the agamid group on yahoo)

>>Thanks! So, do you just drop them in and let the babies have at it and trust that none will escape? My hubby would have a fit if he saw any loose! I was sort of thinking I could maybe set up a feeding tub with a barrier at the top and move the babies to it to feast on roaches.
>>

I tend to either hand feed or, in the case of tiny babies, monitor intake. You can put a bug proof screen on the enclosure or you can put a ring of olive oil on the enclosure.....no harm to the herp then.
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Sonya

Haven't we warned you about tampering with the structure of a chaotic system?
Mrs. Neutron

You will be happy some day when your dubia and prosticus have grown to big colonies. Lobsters do breed fast but they can be a pain to feed off. I keep mine with no substrate which makes it very easy to get them off the egg crates. With the non-climbers I just knock a bunch into a dish then pick out the sizes I want to feed to my geckos. Like Sonya said the baby lobsters tend to gather together and by finding groups can be scooped out and fed off. Even when I was feeding baby lobsters to my fast eating 20 baby hatching frilleds some still managed to escape. They will find any little crack and get out.
James

The dubia and prosticus colonies are definitely growing but I still am hesitant to take many of the little ones yet. I just sold off my entire snake collection to concentrate on the MHDs so no my roaches have a lot more room!

So far I have only fed out of the lobsters colony. The adult MHDs love them. I tried the chilling method and it seems to work well but it doesn't take long for the lobsters to warm up and start moving again from what I've seen.

I put some vaseline around the top of the babies tanks and dropped in some little lobsters this morning to see how they do.

James, do you keep all of your roaches with no substrate or just the lobsters?

Thanks again for the suggestions!
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Marcia - FroggieB Dragons
www.froggieb.com/MHDHome.html

groups.yahoo.com/group/agamid/join
(click the link to join the agamid group on yahoo)

I keep most of the them with no substrate. The prosticus can sometimes be cannibals so a little substrate isn't bad, but I just keep plenty of food and they do great. I am making my own food in a coffee bean grinder (cat food, oats, fish flakes, and anything else good). I also found the water crystal source which works well. $13.00 for 2 pounds of crystals to get 35-40 gallons. It amazes me how much people sell these crystals for. I am up to about 4,000 dubia and won't be happy till I reach about 10,000.
James

So, do you feed a lot or do you just sell that many? You mentioned frilleds. Do you raise them?
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Marcia - FroggieB Dragons
www.froggieb.com/MHDHome.html

groups.yahoo.com/group/agamid/join
(click the link to join the agamid group on yahoo)

I produced 14 clutches of frilleds in 2002, but there are just to many imports and I did not have enough space to keep them while trying to sell my babies. Now I breed knobtails that sell so fast you don't even need to post ads. I have sold roaches on and off for the last two years. My goal is to get really large breeding colonies and eventually make the prices of roaches cheaper so more people can afford them. I have a couple more rack systems to build and some heat issues I'm hammering out, but with summer coming I should be producing several thousand roaches between my dubia, distanti, prosticus, craniifer, discoids, giganteus.
James

How do you house your distantis? Do you use substrate if so what kind? How warm do you keep them? Do you use bottom heat? What do yours eat? Also one last thing do you use egg crates with them?

They are quite a bit different from the other species I have. They prefer burrowing over climbing egg crates. I found that the egg crates were actually causing problems in the enclosure. The distantis would flip on their backs trying to climb and walk past them so I just took them out. (Plus because of their large size they were just moving the egg crate condo all over trying to burrow) Now I have them housed on just aspen shavings. I also noticed they seem to be much more picky when it comes to dinner What do yours eat?

Sorry for all the questions. I would have e-mailed but for some reason hotmail keeps giving me "server is too busy" message. THANKS! Lindsay

These guys do like to burrow. However the adults stick to the egg crates and will breed on them. The last time I kept these I used about 1 inch of sphagnum moss with some egg crates. When I received them the other day they where in about six inches of aspen bedding and they seem to like it. I typically do not like keeping feeders on any type of wood shavings, but may leave them in it to see how they do. Besides these guys and my prosticus I am not using any substate in my containers. These roaches where mainly raised or apples, but they jump all over my blended food. I will feed them my blended food, plus oranges and apples like I do with all my roaches.
James

Thanks James. When I merge all my distantis together early next week I will add a few glued egg crates. I will make sure there is plenty of room on all sides this time though. These roaches are quite a bit bigger and lot more clumsy then the other species I have.

I am feeding all my roaches a mixed blend as well. I think the only thing different is that I am not using cat food, I was using dog food. I have 2 dogs who are on fromm which is a dog food with no allergens, preservatives, dyes etc. I dont see them swarm to the food dish but then again there isnt thousands of them like there is in the lobster bins. Maybe they are eating when it is dark and I am not around. It just seems the hissers, dubias and distantis would rather just eat the fruits and greens then eat the dry mix? Right now it isnt a big deal as I am not feeding any of them to my dragons. When the time comes and my colonies are large enough I will want them to eat more nutritious food. But that is a long ways away!

James and Lindsay,

The two of you are the resident experts on roaches.

Just wondering what species do you keep and how many of each did you start with and how long have you had them.

Israel

Oh I am far from being an expert! I just started a year ago with roaches. James has much more experience and knowledge then me and I always look to him when I have a question or concern

I currently have 4 species.
Climbers:
Lobster Roaches (Nauphoeta Cinerea)
Hissing Roaches (Gromphadorhina Portentosa)

Non Climbers:
Six Spotted Roach (Eublaberus Distanti)
Dubias (Blaptica Dubia)

The lobsters were the first species I bought almost a year ago. I started with 1000 mixed sizes and now I have thousands and thousands. I have to sell occasionally just to thin out the colonies as my dragons cant keep up. The other 3 species I received in trades over the last couple months. None of those colonies are established yet and I would even like to add more hissers and plan on adding more dubias soon!

I am also far from an expert with roaches. This is a good site for reading posts on roaches. http://www.arachnoboards.com/ab/forumdisplay.php?f=18
Anyway, I started a couple years back with 100 adult Eublaberus prosticus (orange heads). To this day these are still my best non-climbing breeders producing the most babies. They are a strange roach. When disturb the put off a pretty strong defense odor that doesn't stink, but smell odd. The also are big time wing biters and need lots of protien. I then picked up a few hundred Blaptica dubia (A.K.A. Argentinean Cockroach, Guyana spotted Roaches, or Orange spotted roach) and about 1,000 lobsters(Nauphoeta cinerea). The dubia breed very well for a non-climber, have pretty soft exo-skeletons, and are so different as adults sexing is a no brainer. I personally think these are the best roaches on the market from my experience. Like everyone already knows the lobster breed and multiple into several thousand in no time, which is why they are the cheapest roach you can purchase. Good feeder, but they can be a pain since they climb and are very fast. Soon after I added Blaberus discoidales (A.K.A. discoids or false death heads) and Blaberus craniifer (death's head roach). Not many people fully understand the variation of the craniifer. It is rumored the much of the U.S. stock is a cross between craniifer and B fusca which is similiar. True deaths head roaches are jet black, expensive, and hard to find. Although I have lots of black ones mine are indeed the crossed version (this doesn't matter one bit if you are using them as feeders). Soon after I added the Eublaberus distanti (6 spotted roach). As nymphs these guys are bulky shiny fat tanks. When they molt into adult they look similiar to orange heads and are sometimes mis-identified. Last but not least I am a small group of Blaberus giganteus (Trinidad Giant Cave Cockroaches). These guys are massive and very cool. Roaches are very simple. The hotter you keep them the more food they eat and the faster they breed. I really think the only thing slowing my colonies is my gecko room I have to keep around 75F. I use bottom heat on the roaches, but a 100F room would be ideal. I feed them blended oats, bran, cat food,sometimes dog food, fish flakes, dried fruits and whatever else. The also get fresh oranges and apples every week. I use crystals for an additional water source. I am still looking to get B fusca and B latteris and maybe a few other non-climbers.
James

I forgot to mention that you can go on the internet and search by the roach name for more information.
James

James,

Thanks for that link. I've been looking for info. on how to culture termites.

Israel