crepsis

Thanks Orin! Me too!

Shucky darn! Another vote against plant based proteins! OK. Food for thought : Just about every plant reproduces by producing seeds, and seeds do not have to come in a fruit - that's just a convenient way for plants to get animals to disperse them farther from the mother plant for them. Most plants produce hundreds or thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of seeds, and only a miniscule amount of the seeds produced actually find favorable conditions to grow. Question: So where do the rest go? Answer: They are eaten/digested by one form of life or another. My guess is that includes the most successful branch of insects - the roaches.

~wipes forehead~ Phew! Cool. Plant proteins = any and all seeds. I always thought that seeds were highly prized by the animal kingdom, due to their high all-around nutrition, including protein. Also, fungus (mycelium & fruiting bodies - it's all the same exact stuff) does contain a significant amount of protein... do roaches ever really eat fungi? (Not just button mushrooms, they're bland, even I don't like them that much unless they are sauteed) Since fungis are great decomposers of cellulose, and since some roaches do like to eat rotting plant matter (lots of cellulose), it would be logical to conclude that they would get a significant amount of protein from fungi also, either by eating the decomposing plant matter and indirectly feeding on the fungus or by feeding on the fungus itself. What do you think about this Matt? What about protein from yeasts (for those readers at home: NOT baking/brewing yeasts out of a package)? Any thoughts? I noticed my nymphs (I only have a small number, so this could be why) won't touch a banana until it's started to turn brown and gooey-looking (it's my thought that at that point it's probably teeming with a lively yeast colony)...maybe they're going after the tasty yeast, maybe they are waiting for the starches to be broken down into sugars, or (at the risk of sounding like an alcoholic) maybe they just like to get drunk from the alcohol

I don't know, but from what I've read the species that require higher protein diets (Orange heads) often do well on occasional feedings of cat food (~30% protein). I would guess that dog food, at around 20% protein is all they would ever need though. As far as B. dubia goes, I don't, because I do not have any B. dubia. No. Almost everything requires some form of protein or other. Omnivores generally do well at around 15%-20% (of actual protein), I'm not sure about insect omnivores though. Amino acids are not proteins but the building blocks of them...the way that you stated that was accurate, but easily misunderstood. (This is semantics, due to the fact that when nutrition analysis is done amino acids are included in a protein profile, most of the time, even though they are not, and should not be considered a substitute for complex proteins) Again, as far as insects go, I could be wrong here. I would *guess* that it would be plant protein mostly, and the occasional bird carcass, other insects, and fungi...Ooops, I covered just about all the higher forms of life, no wait, I meant to do that. Who can say? Haven't you gone on several awesome expeditions? Well, I've got to head off to work...spent too much time out drinking with friends at a birthday party last night...ugh! How did I do?

OK! In an effort to stave off any mold, I did a bit of redesign... I figured that the mold was due to air flow, in other words, the thick mat of moss I was using on the surface of the coconut bark was keeping the water from evaporating fast enough to keep mold from growing. As a result of this conclusion, I have turned the coconut bark substrate into a 2 to 2 1/2 inch thick mixture of washed and sterilized, dried, and crushed oak leaves, moss, sand, and coconut bark - with some activated carbon thrown in, just for kicks. This substrate is still very chunky with lots and lots of air spaces in between it all - the sand was just for added airation, not for filler. I now only have one much smaller area where there is a much thinner layer of moss on the surface (thin enough to allow air flow, and evaporation), and the rest has a couple leaf thick layer of oak leaves on the rest. It still basically looks the same except the area behind the cork flat is where the moss is, and in front of the cork flat is all leaf top. The water seems to be evaporating much faster now, since I have been misting every day, at least once a day, and the substrate does appear to dry much faster than it did before - probably due to the UTH that is constantly heating it. Well, we'll see how it goes, hopefully that will take care of the mold problem, since I actually would prefer NOT to add any extra animals (i.e. isopods) to the tank, unless absolutely necessary. On another note: I've found two large molted skins from two of the larger nymphs! So they are obviously doing OK so far! YAY!

I feed my B. craniifer (true death's head roach) nymphs a choice of ground monkey chow (20% protein content), ground parrot pellets (12% protein content), and hemp protein powder (50% protein content), along with water crystals for a constant water supply, and mist to keep the humidity high. I've recently begun making a mixture of ground monkey chow, ground whole oats, ground wheat germ, ground wheat bran, hemp protein powder, a small amount of calcium powder, a very small amount of herpti-cal vitamin supplement, and adding just enough (wild Rockey Mountain) honey and mixing it all together to form the consistency of just barely moistened mini-pellets/little balls (1mm and less in size)...I've found that the nymphs seem to really enjoy these, as they go right for them and greedily grab them over the ground food choice I offer and even the apples and bananas I added (for variety). I just use a marble mortar and pestle to grind small batches of each of the ingredients before combining, and it seems to work well. I've also recently mixed in washed and sterilized crushed up dry oak leaves to the substrate in case they decide to munch on any of them - apparently some roaches will eat hard-wood leaves. I'm just using what I have around the house for now (I have a parrot - hence the monkey chow and parrot pellets), until my colony starts to grow, at which point, I'll probably look into trying other things to see what they'll prefer, but I'm going to stay with plant based protein for now since it will keep any odor that might possibly arise down. (Although the monkey chow does use whole dried eggs to supplement protein, and animal fat, it would never smell as bad, or cause a bad smell, as actual animal protein does)

Hi great to have you here!

My father's side of the family was from Lithuania originally.

I'm from the US, the State of Colorado...actually my ancestry is half Lithuanian!

Nice!

Hi Ash! I just received my B. craniifer nymphs (Black wings) about a week ago, so I am new to the hobby. Glad to have you on the forums also!

Hello Donatas! Welcome to the forums! I just have the B. craniifer (Black Wings)...and am new to the hobby. How long have you been keeping roaches?

LOL! OK that's what I figured, but just was too impatient to wait and see! (So I thought I'd ask)

OK, so today I pulled out the tank from where I have it (sort of a big wooden box that my bird cage sits on top of), and I noticed that some of the coconut "bark" under the sphagnum looks like it may be getting a bit moldy (just a couple pieces here and there, and just barely moldy, little white specs starting to grow on it), and maybe a couple little things that were mixed in with the moss might be getting moldy too (white hair coming off of it) Which sort of cheeses me off, since both those things should be more resistant to mold than other stuff! Is this the kind of thing that isopods are good at keeping in check? (If so, I'll go outside on Saturday, and see if it's possible to find a few even though it's getting cold here).

I did see the photos, and they do look really similar! I'd like to see mine molt, but I'm kind of doubting that I'll get to see it anytime soon (since they're so good at hiding), maybe when they molt into adults and they need space to fill out their wings

Hey Jacques! Actually, the under tank heater that I am using is 16 Watts...the dimensions are 8" x 12". It doesn't really heat the air above the substrate so much, maybe a little, say 5 degrees above room temp (I doubt it's as much as 10 degrees, but I am not using a thermometer, so I don't know), but is DOES keep the substrate (up to 4-5 inches thick in some places) nice and toasty warm and humid (when sprayed every other day or so with water), so I imagine it's good for the nymphs, since they like to burrow around in it and hide. But the substrate that you are using (jungle earth) I am not familiar with, so I don't know if it would insulate against the heat, or work with the heat mat and stay warm.

OK, cool... I just used like a heaping quarter teaspoon for 1 1/2 - 2 cups water... with these things, a little really goes a long way!

These guys are B. craniifer... and they are super cute! I can't wait to watch them grow. I've already seen one that may have molted, since it was a light brown, and none of them were that light when they arrived... I was thinking about adding another piece of the knobby african hardwood or two, or maybe another smaller cork flat for more vertical living space, but I'm gonna wait on that until I'm sure that my setup is good for them, and I'm sure they are reproducing...

Groovy I was *guessing* (imagining) that every individual would show a minimal amount of variation due to the limited gene pool that the original culture would have started out with, resulting in modern homogenized cultures that show little variation in pattern/design (only varying greatly through time)...so now I can expect all sorts of variation within my colony once it gets going...that's awesome - and good to know! Thanks!

Any ideas, or am I just gonna have to wait and see?

...apparently my nymphs are *real* good at hiding, because I hardly ever see them! I have to resist the urge to dig everything up to look around for them! Luckily, when I moved the tank to take some pics of it, one of them got disturbed and came out of hiding for about a minute...

Hey all! Here's my finished setup! Obviously I made some changes from the plan above...for instance, using sterilized oak leaves from outside along with moss, instead of silk plants/leaves... a cork flat, and a piece of some sort of cool looking african hard wood to seperate the dry/food area from the humid side. There is still a thin layer of sand/activated charcoal underneath the coconut "bark". Also have a piece of 1/8" thick glass covering the humid half of the tank to help retain humidity on that side...supplemental heat with an infrared 50w bulb that I turn on during the day while I'm gone at work and leave on until I go to bed... The moss is up to 3 inches thick in some places, giving plenty of room for the nymphs to swim around in and hide, the coconut "bark" is about 1 - 1 1/2 inches thick all over, and the leaves are layered (so the little ones can play hide and go seek!). Well, I think that's about it...

So I made a half a quart jar of crystals that I've been keeping at room temperature, I washed out the jar really well, and used filtered water that I boiled in the microwave prior to hydrating them. I've been really careful about using a clean spoon when scooping them out. Here's my problem: It seems to me like the crystals have been turning sort of cloudy white (barely)...when I initially made them they were clear as water and the only way you could tell they were crystals was the lumps up on top. Now you can sort of see the outlines of them if you look closely...and it looks like there may be dust in there now, as I can see a couple clear fibers floating between crystals, and specks. Have the crystals been contaminated some how? I detect no sort of odor, either moldy or rotten or otherwise... Should I throw them out and restart a new batch ya think? Thanks!

Wow! Those are really beautiful!

Those are awesome! Nice pics!