Matt K

Thanks- I wish that one woudl have held still as it was hard to photo on the run with my cheesy camera. Orin taught me one of the "things" that make this hobby a habby and not a connect the dots picture is that humidity levels vary from one house, one state, one region to another and its a matter of learning what whorks for you to balance that out. The object is to have them as dry or humid as they need to be to not totally dry out and die, and yet get the water they need to drink. Some substrates can look dry but really be quite humid, and some look dry because they are. Just have to fiddle with it yourself and see what works best for you. No doubt you will get it under control and then will have too many of them!

I have been keeping them for years on cypress mulch. When I tried it without substrate, it was too messy, smelly, had lots of flies, and was overall a bad experience for me. Have none of these issues with the substrate.

This is an adult: ...and like many roaches, the adults can vary in size somewhat. Mine average males 1 to 1-1/4 inch, and females 1-1/4 to 1-1/2 inch, maybe slighty more. When the oothca start to hatch, you will have loads of 1/8 to 3/16ths inch black oval bodied nymphs running around everywhere, and they start getting black and white banded within the next molt or two, as they close in on maturity they get the amber coloration as well. They are a bud-winged roach, so no adults will have full length wings. When you have several adults, it gets easy to distinguish males and females, more so by comparing the posterior ends as males and females are different enough to be somewhat obvious. As for the deaths, could they be too damp? Humid is good, wet not so much. They need to be ventilated enough so that if you spray them down, they will dry off within the day or so. ? ? ? ? Do you have a photo of yours in thier setup to post? That is always helpful....

first of all I would like to purchase or obtain some NON CLIMBING/ NON FLYING/ NON ABLE MULTIPLY OUTSIDE THEIR ENCOSURE feeder roaches *Your requirements really narrow it down to a few limted choices. Most tropical roaches will not survive in your house for long if you live in a temperate or northern climate. So your best choices may be Blaptica dubia and Blatta lateralis, which is why they are the two most common feeders. My second question is in the Rubbermaid container what screens do you use, and how to secure/glue the screens on for ventilation * I use common aluminum window screen and use hot glue to adhere it to my rubbermaid or Sterlite tubs. Works well, and I have photos of them on this forum for reference. my third question will be would a 10 gallon, Glass aquarium be able to accommodate 2-4 Archimandrita tesselata, or even some hisser roaches thanks again an I do apologize in advance if I did not post this in the right area / and all the questions lol. *A 10 gallon tank will hold up to 30 or 40 A.tesselata easily, maybe more. Certainly even more than that (up to 100) hisser roaches. Note that with hissers you will need a very well fitting lid, as they climb, and the nymphs are small, climb well, and can get through narrow spaces.

Watch out , the next 2 years and 3 months go by FAST - at least it did for me. My only advice- take more photos than you think you need to or ought to. You'll be really glad you did down the line.

The beetles are agile fliers, so it could have arrived from just about anywhere and dropped into the roach bin to lay eggs. The best way to keep them out is to keep the bin covered with screen or a lid that has screen over any holes in it. Despite my own covered bins, I have a few different species in most of them and accept it as a fact of life.

This looks normal to me. They may initially take several weeks to produce thier first batch, and then less after that. It has to snowball at first- dont worry. @Bugman Price- I use 2 inches of cypress mulch in everything, with few exceptions, and those are cypress mixed with coconut bark chips, oak leaves, spagnum, etc.

Nuts. I used to remove it, and used to not too, and made no difference so I stopped worrying abouit it....for me Blaberus anything reproduces like fleas only faster, more so with B.discoidalis.

They will rot nicely in there....

I highly doubt it's possible too. Roach ootheca in some species are laid and then its just a "sit and wait" for them to emerge- the ootheca is built to accomodate that. Roaches that retain ootheca create ootheca that do not have the same moisture retaining/stabilizing barrier nor do they have any way to effectively allow gas exchange so the ootheca outside the hisser (in this case) are pretty much guaranteed to die.

Anyone other than me culturing these or just trying to? )

Not a problem until the crickets molt and the roaches eat them fresh out of the wrapper....

I have maybe a thousand nymphs, but the adults comeinto a swarm of a few hundred or more, then within a few to several months they have all died off but a few, and then a few months later the cycle starts over. I have not really paid too much attention to it, but I get the impression they go several months as nymphs and then as much or less as adults, with the whole life cycle being a year and a half, maybe somewhat more. Definately far from the lifespan of say a hisser of some type (2 years maybe 3). Personally if I had to repeat any of this thread anywhere else I would go with Orins post.

Hmm... good point. I wonder what was going on? I'll try to post a photo of one of the roaches- which shoudl be frozen by now....

A can of Black Knight should take care of those...

Never underestimate where a small nymph of Pycnoscelus can go or get through.... they can squeeze through something that appears almost half of its body width. No, my jet black P.niger were not dark P.surinamensis. Now that they may or may not be all hybridized....its just sad. I had only seen them available one time ever and I bought all the person had, and they are long gone from the hobby. Yesterday it a fit of disheartened feelings I bagged the substrate and all, tied it closed and put it in a closed bin outside in the 20 degree weather....now I sort of wish I had thought to pluck out a few that were black/blackish and keep those.... oh well. Frozen roach chips anyone? I still have a few Pycnoscelus drifting around here and there. I found some nymphs that looked like Therea nymphs but now I wonder otherwise (I have Therea pop up here and there too, but they are MUCH less a menace.)

I get mine from a feed store about 4 miles from my house. Mostly they sell feed for horses, cows, goats, but order in other stuff for big ponds and a few local exotics (alpaca, emu, etc.)

They do seem to be REALLY slow to get started, and maybe somewhat slow to reproduce (not really slow, but slower than one would think compared to the Blaberus genus). But once they get going they can be steady producers, and worth the time. The nymphs are probably the proportionately largest of all the roaches, which is really cool.

Commentary: Complacency affects us all sooner or later (and for some, regularly!). Today I note that while I have always been very concerned about containment- in that I have my room of roaches virtually escape-proof into the rest of the house- sometime or another I overlooked inter-bin transferrance. While checking my wonderfully black Pycnoscelus (niger, or so it seems), I found that other Pycnoscelus (surinamensis) had snuck out of thier bin and into this one somehow, and the result after who knows how many weeks is a disaster- a roach that is not really identifiable- like a dark suriname. Miffed that I now have to burn this lot I go about feeding a few other bins. What do I find? You got it. Surinames in several various bins rapidly out numbering the resident colony in just a matter of a couple/few weeks in some cases. And to add insult to injury, a similar circumstance involving Nauphoeta cinerea in a couple of tubs- nearly wiping out my defenseless and meager Diploptera punctata. The thing about either of these invasive species is that they eat other roach species' nymphs as they molt, resulting in no nymphs of the resident species until the adults all die off. So the lesson here: NEVER neglect seemingly indestructable species like Pycnoscelus or lobsters- they will eat everything else you have if given the chance. Tomorrow I will be doing some serious bin cleaning and burning of substrate- the hassle here is that to do so all the obvious livestock has to be moved into a fresh bin with fresh substrate/egg cartons and it takes a while to catch out each one of the right species and not transfer any of the wrong one. Then to knock out /kill whats left with alchohol, then to scoop all that into the fire (which I do outdoors, not in the fireplace in the house). Do yourself a favor, and even if maintenance is annual, do it.

Roughly how many are in your current colony?

Nothing is any lower in maintainability than a roach colony. My dubia colony has not been cleaned in over one year and going on two. I put food/water in and take roaches out to feed my critters. It started with 2 inches of cypress mulch in the bottom, and some of that is still present. Roaches are composters so are inclined to break down egg cartons and anything else in the bin. A plant will only absorb liquid nutrients leaving behind many solids- or at least until the roaches kill the plant. Not sure what the point of isopods would be- they compete for the same food sources. My advice: Most roach colonies do best if you dont mess with them too much as they normally would be set up. Less is more.

Yes they are on purpose. It allows for a convection current of air to prevent either overheating (crowds of roaches produce heat) or staying too cool as chambered air (like a bucket, for example) will reserve cool air as it is denser than warm air and sinks. So too much heat rises and leaves and too much cold air escapes. This is really a passive way to allow fresh air flow through the tub without so much ventilation that it can't retain the temps or dries out too fast. If the tubs are stacked the holes in the top are positioned so that they are not fully covered and still function.

I have who knows how many, a thousand or so if I had to guess. I dont feed them regularly, but when I do they will devour amazing amounts of food (half a cantelope) overnight. Maybe you might take the food away for a few days, then re-introduce it. My rule is feed any roach whatever the bin will eat in a 24 hour period completely with no leftovers once every 4 to 7 days. Similarly, dump water on them once a week, sometimes twice, with a few sp. getting misted occasionally.

Photo of a typical tub I use (some with and some without egg crate cartons): This is an average tub I use (66 qt Sterlite brand) (though I have been told they dont make them the same like this anymore) the holes are 2". This will hold a few hundred Lucihormetica sp, Blaberus sp., or nearly a thousand P.aegyptica, Therea sp., Ergaula sp., and two thousand Blatta lateralis, sand roaches, and even more if for Pseudomops or something like that. Though I have gone to putting some things into 1.5 gallon containers like this: Just to keep from getting overrun with something I dont use as a feeder roach-

I do not use any dish of any sort for any reason. I just drop the food into each tub and there it goes. I also use substrate in all my bins as well.