Maarten..

A part of my colony is from a guy who keeps them on moist cocofiber. He, however, got them from a person who kept them on oatmeal, which is just fine for a lot of species but not for glowpots. The glowspots were surviving on the oatmeal, but not very well. He had some dead ones and only two nymphs in about a half year. I keep them on moist cocofiber as well. I also have some rotten wood in their terra. Thay crawl in the cracks and eat the wood. The cocofiber is more or less beginning to mix with tiny wood chips. They also like to climb from time to time on the wood, but only when the lights are out. They are doing great, I already have seen some nymphs which are very active. I give them pond flakes and apple as their staple diet. Anyone more suggestions for food?

With an esthablished colony I feed them when I feel like it, or when a bunch of kitchen scrapes are to be thrown away. Most of the time, this is three or four times a week. A new colony gets food everyday. In this way I can spend much time with the new roachies so I can see them a lot. Also I can estimate properly what amount of food they will eat.

A picture I took recently. The white one is a female who only was a couple of hours adult. The males went berserk for this one and couldn't wait a minute longer.

I keep them on a thin layer of vermiculite which I water a little bit from time to time. The roaches then drink, in addition to wet food. I've read that the nimfs are vulnerable to deshydratation. I also keep a colony in a naturalistic setup. I cannot say yet which is the best because there are too many hiding places. I just can't count the little creatures, although I see plenty antennae and other bits an pieces of cockroach in the cracks of the bark in their tank. I also tried a substrate of fish flakes but this setup was very fast infected with mites. So that experiment didn't last very long.

Overall it's not too bad. But I guess she will never say: "Hey, Is that a bunch of hissers in your underpants, or are you just happy to see me?" Maybe I should try that, once!

The roaches were first! I already had my hissers before we decided to live together. Her first ultimatum was that the roaches had to leave, but I didn't bend. So the next species (dubia's) started with a miniature colony, which she didn't mind too much, and then the hobby (especially the number of dubia's) started to grow. She likes the sounds of the roaches running about in old leaves. It sounds like a sunny autumn day walk. Once in a while she finds an escapee, and then she's less enthusiastic about it.

Hi everybody, my name is Maarten and I live in Belgium. I'm a 28 year old guy and live together with my girlfriend. I currently keep Gromphadorhina portentosa, Blaptica dubia, Archimandrita tesselata, Gyna lurida, Eublaberus posticus, Phoetalia pallida and Lucihormetica subcinta. None of these species are kept as a feeder roach. But since I also keep praying mantids, sometimes the dubia's and the pallid's are the unlucky pets. Up untill now I haven't yet quit with a species so these guys are also the roaches I have had trough the years. My first cockroaches were the hissers who are in my possession for more than 8 years now. I stumbled into this forum while looking for roaches on the internet. Excuse me for making language mistakes.