AquaticPsychotic

my plan was to perhaps put a baby by itself, count the moults until it was an adult, then find the varying sizes in my collection and preserve them in order. I'm not planning on a huge mass murder or anything, just trying to make something informative, and to me, neat. I've always loved the bug jewelry, and what i find out about resin casting will probably also be used to make some awesome roach jewelry. I guess I'd feel worse about killing them, but they suffer much worse deaths than being frozen by getting eaten alive by my lizards.

oh and i found this about a possible cause of your silvering: "If you just catch your insect and immediately embed it in plastic without dealing with the water content problem then you will probably get silvering." apparently if its not preserved right, there are a couple of different things that cause silvering to happen.

Thanks for telling me about that thread, that is very cool! I have a lot of trouble with the search functions, as things can be called so many different names, and the search function on this forum yells at me for a lot of weird words LOL. The silvery is actually pretty cool, I will have to experiment when my colony gets bigger, its way to small right now to take out any adults. I'm also wondering if the sheen is from the type of resin you used? I know that some are clearer than others. Did you do it in one go, or did you add one layer at a time?

I've searched the forums and have seen this others wondering how many instars a Dubia and Madagascar Hisser has. I'm wondering if I could somehow find out how many they have if i take a newborn roach and keep it separately for a month or two, and count how many times it sheds its skin until it becomes an adult? How does one count these instars? Does being born count as one? Does becoming mature count as another one? The reason I want to do this leads into my next question. I want to preserve roaches in each phase and mount them in size order in resin. I dont really know why, I just think it would be cool to see the progression. What is the best way to kill them? What is the best way to preserve and cast them? I've never done this kind of thing before, and I'm finding mixed answers on the internet. Some are saying adult roaches are too fatty and I'd need to do some sort of Taxidermy on them?? Thanks in advance, and sorry for the dual topic. I didnt want to go around making multiple threads as a noobie

Hey guys, figured i'd introduce myself before i launched into asking questions and posting on threads, so here I am. I am fairly new to roaches, as I started keeping them in early 2011 in small small quantities as feeders for my Blue Tongued Skinks, and then got over the "ew" factor and began to cultivate a colony of Dubias in December 2011. I started out with 5 females and 2 males, and after an infusion of fresh blood am up to 37 females (i gave a few away) and 31 adult (not counting old and raggedy) males. and looooots of nymphs I recently began to cultivate hissers as well. These are more of a just for fun roach, but nymphs can be fed off to give my Dubia colony a break if it ever needs one. I like Madagascar Hissers to play with too though Right now its a VERY small colony...started with 1 adult female and 2 adult males and just about 5-10 tiny nymphs. My female gave birth last month FINALLY! I love all aspects of the Dubias and the Hissers (at least after i discovered how to keep the hissers in the bin!). They no longer gross me out. I'd have more of the LARGE species of roaches, like deaths head, but my bf is already at his limit with 2 colonies I'm still super freaked out by the fast and small roaches like Turks, etc. I live in the Pacific Northwest, and in addition to BTS, i also have Kenyan Sand Boas, a Ball Python, a special needs Suriname Boa Constrictor, an axolotl, and a pain in the butt cat. I'm trying to get over my phobias of spiders, and love to go to our local reptile expos. I take lots of pics of my various animals, and part of the reason I've joined was to learn more about the instars of both Dubia and M. Hissers, because I want to mount each stage in order in a resin cast. I also like learning as many random facts about what i own or might own as i can, so here i am! ~AP