IguanaMama

Does anyone else use babyfood? I sometimes get too busy or lazy to get to the organic market. In a pinch, pouring gerber's organic harvest apple/sweetpotato or blueberry/pear or carrot into a shallow dish seems like a good idea. Any thoughts? Sometimes I just throw some organic nutty health bread in too. Cereal flakes yum! I'm also raising three little human boys practically by myself, there's only so much time I can spend preparing food for cockroaches.

I do. But I don't breed them as feeders, they are just pets, so I don't recommend my set-ups if you want high out put of young-uns. I have several tanks and I'm currently redoing, but basically, I use a combination of organic fertilizer free top soil, sphagnum moss, coco fiber, hardwood, oak leaves, a little of this and a little of that thrown in for the substrate. Then I landscape with lots of corkbark and driftwood. I used to use fake aquarium plants and it looked nice, but I don't really like fake too much so I pulled it out. In my main tank I have a mix of fancy hissers, ORIN'S ROACHES!, beetle mimics and pallid roaches. I used to have orientals and harlequins in there, but they died off. I think because I'm not keeping it humid enough for them. I dunno. I had a hard year and wasn't paying enough attention to them. The pallid roaches have suddenly exploded so I want to seperate them and start using them as feeders. They are really a pretty little roach. Anyway, I layer the cork bark. This creates lots of hiding spots. If you do it right, you can observe the social orders of the hissers. I have one giant morph hisser, that my kids named homerclease, I call him pisser the hisser. I can take him out and put him back anywhere in the tank, but he always beelines right back to his spot. He knows his spot. If I put any other male near his spot, well, it's hysterical to watch. hahahahahahahahaha Everyone should have hissers......

Here's my experience. I started with three yearlings, With great trepidation, I gave them fragrant dried eucalyptus leaves. Within three months all three were dead. I then had the opportunity to purchase three much larger ones, although the owner didn't know the age or sex. I sexed them as two females and one male. The former owner thought they were the same age, but the male is much smaller than the two females. He is around 1.5 inches (4 cm), the girlies are around 2 inches (5 cm) or thereabout. I keep them in a mixture of coco fiber and playground sand, hardwood and oak leaves. They have had a tiny bit of the eucalyptus leaves, but by the time they got some, it was much drier and less fragrant. For moisture, I dampen paper towel and toss in and I also toss in water gel. Now and then I offer them grainy bread, carrots, apple, greens and other assorted fruits and vegetables. I have also given them organic dry dog and cat food-very little. Anything that goes into their home is certified organic and pesticide free. Because of their high cost and fragility, I don't enjoy them and I'm considering giving them to a friend that would use them for school demonstrations. They make me nervous.