macbrush

I only feed them twice a week at most, with parrot fruit and veggie flavour pallets. Occasionally some kitchen leftover or some fresh veggies and fruits that's about to go bad. Once a month, I offer some cat/dog pallets to some species that need extra protein.

You need some vertical space with larger flat surface area for them to find easily. They need space to hold on to, come out, and hang there for a while. Egg cartons just won't cut it, IMHO.

Thanks for the reply, I think I'll try increase humidity and possibly do some culling of the colony and see how it goes. Its really packed in the tub, whenever I throw food in there, I just have to spread the food in the tub, and they came out like cockroach attack in movies.

I had some mishap with styrofoam, my first draft hisser colony died out when I was using some styrofoam egg crate. I still don't know whether styrofoam was the cause, but that was the only difference I could find compare to other colonies.

Arh, that make sense, since the tub getting a little overcrowded, and as the weather is getting cold, humidity also dropped quite a bit. Thanks Kenneth

My Blaberus giganteus recently started some really bad cannibalising all the newly molted individuals. I feed them mostly parrot pallets, with some cat pallets every few days, and occasionally fresh veggies and fruits left over from my kitchen. Could it be over crowded or the weather is getting cooler? Just want some ideas, maybe its nothing, maybe they've been doing it all the time, and just happened I notice the last few times. Cheers Kenneth

I could imagine my Leopard Geckos get swarmed and eaten if I neglect feeding the roaches for a day or two. Some of my feeder colonies are, what I consider, vicious that I truly believe if I place my hand in there for an hour or two, provided I could keep my hand stable enough, my hand would probably missing a big chunk of meat, if it still exists at all!

Depends on what kind of reptiles and how many you are talking about. I have 4 geckos, and my Dubia colony is never more than 500ish and thats more than enough to keep the ball rolling. I just give any excess to my friends every once in awhile.

Thanks, I really hope that some of the nymphs down there are females, I probably wouldn't bother them, I'll just keep my fingers crossed.

About a year ago, a seller gave me a few Dominos as gift when i was purchasing other stuffs from him. Those quickly died but left me quite a few egg capsules. I left them alone for many months until I saw some movements in the substrate, and I started feeding them. Surprisingly (to me), I ended up quite a few of them. Anyway, now I have about 20 adults, and still there are some nymphs under the substrate. They have been matured for over 2 months now, but I have yet seen any new egg cases. So I examined them carefully, and I couldn't find any females, they all have very long antennae. So my question is that whether it is normal for Domino roaches to have a very high male ratio? Cheers Kenneth

Almost the same thing happened to my hybrid hisser colony last month. The tube was close the window, but I forgot the sun will shine on that spot for an hour or so in summer, the whole box was overheated one day, and everything in it literally cooked.

From the pictures, i think it is a female as well.

Thanks for the replies. I started a few days ago, and the best thing is that even the domino and peppered roaches went crazy about those pallets, they didn't usually eat that much!

I am thinking to use parrot pallets to feed my roaches instead of fresh fruits and veggies. Brand like Zupreem have different kind of pallets, but fruit mix, and veggie mix seems suitable. I can get a 3.5 lb bag for US$15, so it would work out much much cheaper than fresh fruits and veggies.

Yeah, put them in a small box first, that's what I will do. Another problem I was facing at the beginning of most colonies is mites and other critters, they easily overwhelm the nymphs if I keep the enclosure high in humidity and have food in there at all time, so I had to feed and spray sparingly which further slow things down.