Roachsmith

I have them in a plastic cube right now with no air holes yet. If I find any nymphs or some hatch out I'll see if they can climb glass.

How would one contain a roach that small? If they couldn't climb glass, it'd be easier.

I don't know. They can climb glass very well. Bug barrier might work, I haven't tried that yet.

Maybe! I will see how many I can collect this week

They're pretty hard to catch and I'm starting to find less of them. I'm working on getting more though so I'll let you know

The roaches that hatch out of those ooths must be TINY! The ooth is only as big as a grain of sand!

Someone at the British Museum has identified them as Phyllodromica (Luridiblatta) trivittata. I'm sending them some specimens for study

They don't seem to be. The majority of them prefer to be outside.

I have never found any males, but there seems to be lots of females under bushes. I'm wondering if maybe males hang out in the bush instead of under it. I'll have to take a better look next week. I did get a reply from someone at the California Academy of Sciences:

"The cockroach that you are seeing was first noticed in Marin County a few years ago. Specimens were sent to the California Department of Food and Agriculture, and they in turn sent the specimens to a specialist in Germany. So far, we have not heard back from them. There are no specimens of this species in the CAS collection. It appears to be from a species group found in SE Asia. By the way, only females are wingless – males have wings."

Norman D. Penny, Ph.D.

Sr. Collections Manager

Entomology Department

California Academy of Sci.

Interesting. I'm in Sonoma County which is pretty close to Marin. Do you have any suggestions of where I might send one (or a pic) for ID?

I will try the SCABIES forum too. Thanks.

Can someone please ID these roaches for me? I found them in Santa Rosa, California. They're small, about .25" and appear to be adults. I originally thought they were nymphs because of their size and they resemble german roach nymphs. However, one of them is laying an ooth!

Hope someone knows what they are!

Thanks. I'll try raising the humidity a bit and see if that helps.

How long do adult panchlora live? Mine only seem to live a few weeks, maybe a month after they've matured. Is that normal?

Congrats! One of mine just laid it's first ooth yesterday! I'm so excited. I hope it hatches. Would it be safe to separate it from the adults or should I just leave it in there? I kind of want to keep track of how long it takes and how many nymphs emerge.

I've had hissers and lats spit on me. Dubias spit too. I'm pretty sure it came out of their mouth. Haven't seen it on their wings though. That's interesting.

I love bugs, but these have always been kind of freaky to me. I guess it's all the times I've been suprised by them crawling on my leg or popping out from under pots and pans in my house. In fall the males wander around looking for mates and I always have to rescue them from my work. I can hear them tapping on the linoleum in the hallway as they walk across or scratching on the walls. They can hiss by rubbing their back legs against their abdomen and they have a pretty strong bite.

They're probably the coolest bugs we have here in california though. I've tried keeping them but haven't been able to keep them alive for more than a few months. Not sure why. Probably wasn't replicating their natural habitat good enough. They are scavengers so they will eat anything but really love catfood. I caught one in the drawer once that tore open a package of Mentos and had already eaten half of one.

Humidity seems to be more important for nymphs. I noticed nymphs will die if they humidity isn't high enough but adults seem to be just fine with a light spray every once in a while.

If I have a tank with a mixture of adults and nymphs, I just try to keep one side moist and that's usually where the nymphs hang out.

I give mine fresh fruit and veggies every other week. Roaches LOVE apples. My hissers fight over them. lol.

A few on my wish list are G. oblongata, beetle mimics, and more therea. I hope to see my colonies take off too. Winter has been pretty rough on them. Despite my efforts to keep them warm and happy I still lost a few. But with some luck, they will start breeding again soon.

Also looking for regular madeirans. The gold ones are everywhere but I can't find the regular ones for some reason. I have a few but no nymphs yet.

Sounds fun! I'm looking for some skunk roaches. If you happen to pick some up let me know

Nice! Do you have pics of your Aeluropoda insignis? I would really like to see what those look like

I'm pretty sure I had some of those near my work. I could only find nymphs in the fall so I couldn't ID them. I didn't keep any because I thought they might be pests and didn't have a secure container for them set up. I plan to get a few this year if I see any so I can find out what they are.

I have three (two females and one male). If you keep the temp and humidity up they will be pretty active. They do like to hide sometimes so try to keep the hide spots to a minimum if you want to see them more often. I give mine 6 crickets a week and they always seem to dissapear. I haven't been lucky enough to catch one eating a crick yet.

Those are great pics! What kind of camera do you use?

There's a pic here: a. tesselata

I only have about 3 adults but so far they are all this dark color.

Nice pics! I love these roaches. All of mine are really dark and not as speckled as that one.

The first hissers I ever got had these mites on them. The mite population got out of control when I raised the humidity in the tank. There were so many on my hissers that it just didn't look healthy.

I used the "shake and bake" method too. It works great. I would suggest using calcium powder instead of flour though. Usually a little bit remains on them even if you brush it off. The calcium powder won't get stuck to them like flour will if they get wet after.