Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Oh my God, cockroaches are such a pain! I remember reading on the Anole caresheet posted on kingsnake that lobster roaches are great feeders. Easy to breed, easy to care for, less odorous, less chitin, nutritious, etc. So, I bought a 100.

Ok, while they may possess all of those qualities, they left out the bad. First, they're slippery as hell! Those little buggers are darn near impossible to hold on to. They're always trying to move, and can slip through the smallest crack in your hand, wiggle out of your fingers, and slip off of tweezers unless you practically crush them.

Second, they cling to everything. I have lights all over the top of my tank. Rather than try to move hot lights, I usually just lift the screen top up a bit and slip a cricket or silkworm through the crack. With roaches, they quickly cling to the rim, screen, or glass. Then, I have to flick them a few times to get them to fall. And if they get to the glass, they climb that, too!

Anyone else use roaches as feeders and have some tips?

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1.0.0 Common Snapping Turtle (Goliath)
1.0.0 Brown Anole (Anubis)
1.0.1 Green Anoles (Baal, Hathor)
1.1.0 Great Basin Collared Lizards (Amon, Amaunette)
0.1.0 Chilean Rose Hair Tarantula (Spiega)
0.1.0 Spoiled Mutt (Storm)

My husband used to feed his wild desert tarantula these easy to catch wild roaches. At first the tarantula was like "great, big easy food to catch" and after eating a few he refuses them.

-Nicole

wow, how can you touch those things? i am going to have nightmares for a week over this post
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vonnie
***There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is in having lots to do and not doing it. Mary Wilson Little ***

Vonnie,

You make me laugh I think they are disgusting... My husband was the one who picked them up. We weren't married back then but I was disgusted when I saw cockroaches eating in the tarantula tank.

I am even disgusted whenever I see his plastic replica. Anyways once we thought we might drop the replica into the frosted flakes and see which of our room mates(had 2 for a couple months) would get the surprise because for a little while they were fighting over the frosted flakes; however, this prank was not meant to be because it has the potential to mentally scar the lucky recipient .

-Nicole

i can laugh about my cockroach phobia because it has subsided some since i moved to california. i grew up in south carolina and we did not have just cockroaches but palmetto bugs, the cockroaches that fly around so if you tried to wap at them, you never knew if they were going to fly at you and i have really long thick hair and i was always so afraid one would fly at me and get stuck in my hair. silly, yes. but i have really dumb luck so the possibilty was high
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vonnie
***There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is in having lots to do and not doing it. Mary Wilson Little ***

Oh, I understand . I am originally from Alaska and didn't see any cockroaches until I moved to Las Vegas. Now that my husband and I moved to northeastern Nevada, it's to cold for cockroaches.

I have pretty long hair too and one summer in Alaska after playing outside in the woods my family said something scary was crawling through my hair. I asked for them to remove it because I didn't see it and they didn't want to touch it and then my dad removed this 2 inch long, black, skinny beetle.

Later, our rooted our chickens to destroy this 2 inch long, skinny, black with white spots beetle. But the shell was to hard for them to peck through.

I never did find out what type of beetles they were, but most of the insects in Alaska are small. Except, of course, the mosquitos.
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-Nicole

2.1.0 collared lizards
2.0.0 side-blotched lizards
1.0.0 desert tarantula
small tropical fishes

Meh. No big deal. I'd never touch a wild one, because you don't know where they've been, but I figure these ones are pretty clean.

My plan, though, is to get better at picking them up with tweezers. It is really the only way to get them into the tank since they tend to try to hold on to your hand, then slip onto the floor.

The last thing I need is them setting up residence loose in the house!

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1.0.0 Common Snapping Turtle (Goliath)
1.0.0 Brown Anole (Anubis)
1.0.1 Green Anoles (Baal, Hathor)
1.1.0 Great Basin Collared Lizards (Amon, Amaunette)
0.1.0 Chilean Rose Hair Tarantula (Spiega)
0.1.0 Spoiled Mutt (Storm)