CodeWilster

Home Depot is probably easiest for most. They're with all of the other drills and parts. You could ask an employee for help, just need a hole saw and bit/mandrill for any regular power drill. Here's a link to a cheap one I found on Amazon with both components. Just be sure to get the right vent size. Video is in the making but has been put on hold. It will come around someday

Wow those are awesome, the nymphs almost resemble a scale insect. Very cool, thanks for sharing!

You would be correct sir! It's a Blaberus craniifer nymph.

Congrats, these things are awesome and grow very fast at that stage. Even though it'll slow down over the next few years, by this time next year they'll still be humongous if you keep them going. Also, the BEST oak leaf food for them is the type that is very decayed (dry, crispy, breaks apart in your hand). I would avoid the leathery, freshly fallen fall oak leaves. If you come across soft, spongy rotten wood they love that too - and of course dog food kibble. I love watching them grab food and drag it around before eating it. Reminds me of a dog trying to find a spot to nibble on a treat.

Yours have nice full yellow banding. Good luck with them! If you put a piece of fruit in there every once and a while you'll see them on it. They're pretty shy to light though like some other millis.

Yeah, first one I found was dried up on the floor and I had no clue where it came from. Then after giving the plant a good soak, about 5 adults surfaced to escape the water. Somehow now a few weeks later, this still happens but now only with a couple more. They're an awesome milli, very colorful and super easy. I just threw mine in a deli cup and they haven't gotten the attention they deserve, and yet they are still thriving and even reproducing.

I don't think you'll have any issues with these guys in either setup. The only downside to smaller setups with millis is that they can process the substrate much more quickly, so usually bigger is better to cut back on how often you need to change substrate. These guys are very small though, and a 2.5 gallon is plenty big enough for a dozen but the 5.5 wouldn't hurt either. I have a volunteer colony living in a houseplant's pot that I got from Home Depot, every time I soak the plant I find more Bumbleebee mills. They're neat little guys!

Hmm I can't say I have though I haven't been sifting through their poop lately! They look like they're full of air? I bet it's something in the dog food that is just passing through the digestive tract abnormally. What type of dog food kibble do you feed?

Yeah I've been making it a habit to change out their substrate every once and a while which was easy when it was just adults. Now I've got a ton of nymphs though and so it's going to get tricky!

Yeah, the amount of poop they produce is insane!

Just a few leafy-looking roaches. Epilampra maya Rhabdoblatta formosana

Glad I stumbled upon this, these are awesome Gil! Great photos too by the way. Do you have any shots of an adult female, and/or some nymphs too? @wizentrop

Yeah I'm aware they are beneficial, I just like to be top predator in my bug room and make sure their numbers don't get too crazy ?

A beautiful hobby classic - G. grandidieri "Tiger Hisser" Excuse the photo-bombing mite that met its doom shortly after this photo...

I actually wasn't talking about the vents they haven't touched those, and for the few I was worried about I did a layer of Vaseline around the underside of the vents hoping to help stop them from getting to it in the first place. Even in my tub of 500+ Periplaneta with no Vaseline the mesh hasn't been touched though. What I was actually talking about is the blue foam seal that comes with the sterilite tubs that seals the lid around the outermost edges. A few species occasionally gnaw on this as some have discovered.

Wow! Beautiful

So a few people have run into the occasional species that decide to chew the gasket seals. Out of my 100+ tubs, I've only had a couple do this and there seems to be no rhyme or reason as to why. For months they don't bother, then suddenly I take a lid off and there's a chewed area. The species that have done this that I've noticed so far include Periplaneta australasiae, Phoetalia pallida, Ectobiidae sp. "Malaysia" and that's it for me (P. pallida actually chewed to the point that small nymphs were escaping). My friend Spencer had his Eurycotis floridana do this as well but mine have yet to show any interest. I imagine some other species I keep may eventually decide to gnaw on the gaskets sometime. For those few species that gave me trouble, I have filled in the chewed areas with silicone and smeared some over the exposed edges of the gasket they could chew on. I want to look into some other alternatives though, such as "painting" a layer of something over the gasket to see if that stops them from doing it again. Silicone does seem to work but it's not made to be painted onto things like this and is pretty messy so I'm hoping to try something more fluid. Fortunately it's not a big issue considering how infrequent it is, but is an occasional problem with this caging system none the less and I want to tackle some potential solutions. I'll keep you guys posted! Oh and just letting some of the commenters know that I haven't forgotten...

Alright and lastly the White Eye mutation of P. americana:

They're doing really well however I know people have had issues with their colonies reaching a point where ooths no longer hatch and the adults die off slowly. Could have something to do with a needed cool period/diapause or possibly sterile males. I'm hoping this doesn't happen though. I've got several adults and a few subadult nymphs, and about half a dozen ooths that look good so far that I'm waiting to see if they hatch. They definitely seem slower in reproduction than my other Periplaneta.

Keeping this thread going! I love Periplaneta. P. americana P. australasiae P. brunnea P. fuliginosa P. japonica As I was posting this I realized I have yet to take any photos of my White Eye P. americana...one more pic to come!

I'm DYING to try Ectobius (any species) because I think you're exactly right though I think they may need a very significant cooling in temperature too.

Very nice Stanislas, I wouldn't have thought to use a splatter guard that's a great idea! Especially for occasional chewers like Periplaneta, etc. To Hell-Spawn, Tleilaxu pretty much said it. It's got to be a tight fit to function best. The issue is the round vents do have a nice fine screen that would work great for most roaches, but tiny roach nymphs (Balta, Blattella, etc) can get through them as is, and so can the fungus gnats. I wanted something fine enough to block everything in/out and that was also cheap/very clean looking by the end and so this is what I went with. You could easily glue/solder just about any mesh - I just wanted a professional look with total effectiveness. Maybe one day somebody will make perfectly round vents like that but with micro screening. Until then, gotta make them myself!

Thanks! I only did that for experimental purposes. You could likely mist the whole enclosure on and off and get them to hatch. Though I allowed most of mine to cool (since these overwinter as ooths) I honestly do not think temperature is key because I had some hatch that never left the 80F bug room. I think it is 100% moisture and time related, though warmer conditions probably speed the process. That reminds me, the ooths that died were the ones kept evenly moist all season. I had a moist batch in the fridge, another at room temp, and in the bug room. All constantly moist/wet ooths died whereas the ones kept mostly dry and then moistened occasionally are what hatched.

I've got a friend who makes awesome, borderline professional videos. When he gets back from his trip he's going to teach me what he knows and we'll make some sweet videos including a bug room tour. Just waiting on all that

After sending some of these out, I wanted to post an article regarding their care since they are a tricky species and are recommended for advanced keepers. Firstly, as you read this, know that quite a bit of it is completely my own experience and observations, speculations, etc and don’t assume it to be pure science by any means. I am posting this simply because, like so many others, we want to figure out how to successfully keep as many cockroach species as possible in captivity. Others had failed with this species including myself, but now I’m happy to announce that I think we’ve cracked the code. I wanted to share that information here and I'll be posting additional updates as I work with these guys more and more. Also, before you get too excited about this species, keep in mind that they are TINY, they can climb anything, and are very sensitive to too much moisture. My container for them was my standard small target tub like in THIS post. Probably bigger than necessary, but it works. The vents are reinforced with no-see-um netting to prevent escapes, and the gasket takes care of this as well. Here are a couple photos of their specific setup. Bedding is a coco, cypress chips, and sand mixture, covered in a layer of dry moss and dry oak leaves. The cork bark seems to be useless as I rarely see them on it. They prefer to hang out in the corners under the leaf litter. One corner has water crystals as you can see. A little background: Luridiblatta trivittata, the Three-lined Cockroach is a tiny species of Ectobiid cockroach that has within the past decade or so been introduced into northern California. They originally are from European mediterranean countries including Italy, Israel, etc. and somehow found their way to the west coast of the USA sometime around 2006. They’ve spread throughout the greater bay area and seem to continue their spread throughout the region with reliable reports from Healdsburg south into Palo Alto (I’m sure they are well outside of this range by now too). Though they occasionally wander into homes, they do not appear to be a “pest species” and spend the vast majority of their time beneath leaf litter outdoors. Many people assume them to be german roach nymphs due to their similarities in coloration/pattern to Blattella germanica. My specimens were originally collected as adults from a park in Larkspur, CA. For care, this species needs things BONE DRY. They begin to die off if kept too moist in stuffy air. My bug room is about 30% humidity and this is probably due to all of the other moist roach containers and a couple house plants, since the rest of the house is in the low 20s or even lower (I live in Phoenix, AZ). They also prefer it warm (80+F). I had some do just fine in a container in 100 degree weather outside. I don’t recommend keeping them at room temperature long term though they may be ok in it especially as nymphs. My original specimens were collected in thin leaf litter on hard, dry dirt that was in the direct sun most of the day in Larkspur, CA. Of course, they do need water one way or another and are susceptible to desiccation like anything else. In my opinion, the best way to provide water for them is to use water crystals in one corner of the container. You’ll have to recharge them frequently. Maybe once a week I do a split second, light mist on the container walls and can see them sipping the tiny water droplets. I would imagine that 99% of their moisture in the wild comes from their food, and they do tend to huddle together in small depressions in the ground beneath the leaf litter which is a fairly common roach behavior to help reduce moisture loss. As long as they are kept this way, they grow very fast and soon you’ll have adults running around. My first adult male matured in 70 days, and an adult female popped out just a few days later. As far as food goes, common roach fare is just fine. Mine seemed to enjoy carrot, cucumber, apple, dog food kibble, etc. The photo at the beginning of this post is of two adult males. Here are some freshly hatched nymphs: The trick isn’t just getting the nymphs to adulthood though, I had an excellent success rate of rearing nymphs to adults in the above setup. The next tricky part is getting the oothecae to hatch. Thank God for Kyle Kandilian and his suggested reading to me that discussed how another Ectobiid roach oothecae (Ectobius sp) required sudden moisture to stimulate hatching. Shoot me a message if you'd like to see the paper. Turns out L. trivittata oothecae are the same, and are comparable to plant seeds. They seem to need to be kept very dry, and then cool/dry, and then sudden moisture and warmth in spring stimulates them to absorb water and hatch shortly after. Sounds complicated, but it’s really not. It basically follows the patterns of a Mediterranean climate. My biggest batch of oothecae hatched after just leaving them on the windowsill all winter with a slight misting once a month. Then in early spring they were brought into the warm bug room and I increased the mistings, allowing things to dry out in between. You know when they're about to hatch because they suddenly bloat up and lighten in color (again, kind of like a seed!) Eventually with the dry/wet cycle, you’ll come home to a container full of tiny black Luridiblatta babies like in the photos above. Below is a photo of the oothecae. The left 3 are basically normal oothecae not ready to hatch, and the three on the right swelled up after a recent misting then hatched several days later. The ones on the left eventually did as well with the warm and moist/dry cycles. I am currently culturing this species and plan to run some experiments to nail down their care even more accurately. This time around, I’m also trying to see if I can trick the oothecae into hatching much earlier in the year, hopefully to the point where there can be overlapping generations and that way they are not just a “seasonal” roach. Though I have my own group of F1s that are finally dropping ooths, I'm hoping to collect more this September for anyone interested in this species. Late summer is when adults (mostly females with ooths) can be found in the wild. I'll end for now with a couple more photos...