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I have been keeping a Blatta lateralis colony for 1 year now. The colony when it arrived, it came with few beetles of lesser mealworms. I kept them together inside the same bin. The colony thrived ! Both species did quite well. And i had absolutely no smell whatsoever. I kept them inside a big bin, with a small amount of cocofiber, and long carton tubes for the roaches to hide in. Once covid hit, i had to rely more and more on my roach colony as food source. At a similar period i noticed a significant decrease on adult numbers over time and a large increase on lesser mealworm beetles. So recently i decided to separate both species, to try to bring back my colony numbers as the local pet store wont help me get any more roaches from mainland china, they say because of covid, but its actually for economic reasons (Macau is a sort of independent region from China, just like HK, with borders etc), as they can sell more crickets which they raise themselves. Now i have a bin with adult roaches, where i now collect their oothecas, and put on another bin for nymph roaches to make sure adults dont eat any nymphs and a separate bin for lesser mealworms. Even being a smaller adult colony i clearly notice that the musky smell is much stronger. And I would like to control that again, but I am not sure if part of my colony decline was due to the beetles eating the oothecas or not. But i am sure that the mealworms and beetles were helping handle roach dead bodies, frass and any food leftovers. Do you have any recommendations? Thank you, regards

Hello friends, I wasn't sure about to start this thread, but maybe it could be useful for someone :-) I breed Red Runners using the same "cricket breeding model", and I've found that is a really organised way to breed this species. I guess it begins with the harvesting of oothecae. Every some weeks I carefully take the most oothecae as possible away to the colonies tanks. Sometimes I do this at the same time of cleaning session in the colony, so I can replace the dirty substrate (free of oothecae) after that. I use another bin with slightly moist substrate to put a layer of around one centimetre of Red Runner oothecae :-) At this point the growing tank should be ready for them to hatch and be free :-) I used to use crater pieces as ramps for them to get out of the incubator tupper by themselves; but mines use to be a little cowards and they takes their time to jump out of it. So I prefer to let the craters in and shake them out every some while They are a lot, and in some weeks it will be necessary to divide the colonies into different tanks, I use to change the dirty substrate at this point again, is really easy when you don't have to be careful of discarting any oothecae :-) And then they will have enough space to reach adulthood in a healthy way... I use to do another complete cleaning of the tank before they start laying new oothecae... it makes such the work less chaotic ;-) And at this point I make "the purge" ... that means to take away the excess of males to reach a sex ratio of (in appearance) around 1 male for every 5 females... I use them all for the current tarantula´s feeding session... I leave a satisfying video of some of them here... ...And well, from here the process start again... This way I keep my Red Runner colonies clean, separated by sizes and always ready to use! Bye!

Today my Red Runners/Turkistan Roaches and Orangehead roaches arrived. All over them are great healthy animals. The Orangeheads will not climb sterilite containers much like the Giant Caves but the Turkistans will climb up the walls of sterilite containers with ease. I put packing tape border on the inside of each sterilite container , it stops all the climbing roaches in their tracks, the tape is too slick for them. My guess is probably a weekly wipe down to keep the take smooth , clean and slippery. My guess is, if you use Turkistan Roaches as feeders in an aquarium tank , they can not climb glass but can climb the silicone corners in the aquariums. I would probably suggest neatly covering the silicone corners/edges inside the aquariums with packing tape and keeping the tape clean on a weekly basis or as needed. Perhaps this will prevent any escapees . The orangeheads are really an attractive roach, the turkistans---not so much !! But I feel great the turkistans will make an awesome feeder roach. I found some " pet " roaches and a few other " feeder " roaches species on a different website that I will be ordering very soon. Keeping roaches is an unusual hobby and not the most politically correct hobby with the peers..In a weird way you get sucked into it and it's very enjoyable / fun hobby to take on. I'll have to admit, I'm in the closet with my peers when it comes to " having roaches as feeders and pets " ....