EffeCi

A Blattella germanica nymph, no doubts...

A friend of mine found three of them in a cricket tube he bought in an animal store... so that's not so strange... Blattella is so invasive...

I have a tea cup with the same picture... bought on ebay...

I'm breeding around 60 different species...

May be something is wrong with me?

Help...

They look like a male and two nymphs of Blatta lateralis....

I've eliminated substrate in all my hisser's boxes (Gromphadorhina portentosa, G.grandidieri, G.oblongonata, Elliptorhina chopardi, Princisia sp.)... only eggcrates and three little dishes (petri) for dry food (pond sticks), fresh food (veggies and fruits) and water crystals...

Only half of the box is heated.

They're breeding a lot, growing fast and happy....

I've data for the most common pest species... but they're referred to 30°C temperature...

Temperature (but also food, humidity and other factors) has a remarkable influence on ootheca's number, births for ootheca, number of matings, etc.

In the south of Italy, this is a pest species....

Yeah, it looks like a subadult of the golden kind...

I'm a professional pest control operator.. and I've seen many times the presence of bedbug and german cockroaches in the same infested houses...

And there was a big infestation of both species...

I bought 30 of them from a german breeder just one year ago... now they're more than 240...

Nice...

Nymphs have no problems of humidity, so they grow quick and well even in a dry environment.

But adults needs a relatively high humidity tax to live and reproduce.

I lost my first colony of Panchlora, some years ago, keeping them too dry.

My eggcases have started to hatch in these days too...

We have experimented Deropeltis erythrocephala ("Mombasa") as feeder for tarantulas, and it seems to work well... but spiders have external digestion, so they seem to be not disturbed by quinons...

In my experience, if adults die in a short time, the environmental humidity is too low...

This one?

http://everest.ento.vt.edu/~watson/pages/Photoalbum.html

The only key I found on the web...I hope that may be useful for you...

http://www.pest2000.it/TESTI/blattaria.pdf

It looks more like a Macropanesthia male...

I use only pond sticks as dry food

No, it isn't Macropanesthia, footsteps are too long....

Eheh... I had the same problem with my wife when I bought my first 4 hissers, four years ago...

now I keep 52 different species...

Er... what species of roach are you talking about? You didn't tell it....

Don't know... but mint essence is often component of insect repellers....

Hi EffeCi

That's great, thank you. BTW Is the male always paler? Also, once the oetheca drops, am I supposed to get rid of it when cleaning? I never know when the nymphs are born, or still inside!

Now for the rest of the species..!

Yes, the male is always fully winged and light brown.

Eggcases are dropped after some days and take from 30 to 45 days or more to hatch (it depends from temperature). You have to rescue them if you clean the tank.

Hatched eggcases are open and very light... they fly off if you breath.

Very difficult to see if a specimen of Phoetalia pallida is male or female from a picture... and it's so reproductive that using females instead of males to feed is not a problem.

Like Madagascar Hissers, Elliptorhina chopardi's males are more "horned" than females.

Bye

Franco

Blatta lateralis (ex Shelfordella tartara)

Male (on top), female and eggcase

I'm keeping them in a medium plastic box, in a moss substrate mixed with bleech and oaks old leaves.

Half of the moss is wet, the rest is dry and warmed.

My glowspots prefers to stay buried in the dry substrate during the day, but they mess up the wet every night.

I also feed them with pond sticks and apple.

They seem to be well... two weeks ago I had my first nymphs... 20 or so...