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Hello dudes. I know I shouldn't post this content here, but I'm desperate and I can't wait to have my account verified. I'm having some problems with my hisser colony. Since October I've found a lot of nymphs of madagascar hissing cockroach on their backs, almost dead. I've let them in the terrarium and, on the next day, they were dead. I just don't know what's going on. Obs.: my hissers live in a plastic box with organic soil as substrate. I put a paper with water and feed them with fruits (banana, apple, orange etc), fish food and dog food. Obs2.: I live in Brazil and on the last weeks we're witnessing high temperatures here. Obs3.: so sorry for posting this here, I'm very very very desperate because I love these roaches. Here is the pic of how I found my hissers

I've had a small colony that started out around 12-14 Blaberus Fusca nymphs, who i've had for around 3 months. I started getting random die off of nymphs at around 2 months or beginning of the third month. First it was mostly the nymphs, all around their final instar. They did not display any sort of system of fungi or insecticide problems. Or any sort of lethal mites. (Besides general grain mites) If I find them 'knocking on deaths door' they were unresponsive, lethargic and limp with some twitching. Sometimes I could keep one going a little longer with some sugary food but the end result was still death. I've lost two adults (one male, one female) and i've lost count of the nymphs. They were originally kept around 83 degrees at a general 60-70% humidity. I added a lid and weekly misting thinking maybe they needed more humidity. Their diet had small amounts of fruit such as bananas and Beardie fruit bites. (I work at a lizard farm where that sort of food is abundant.) They had started on a mostly ground dog food diet, then switched to chicken mash. I ended up giving them a sort of platter that was dog food, chicken mash and a protein mix to see if there was any adjustment in the dying or food preference. I then relocated them to my office that stays at 73-74 degrees around 40-45% humidity with a open lid. They have a substrate of coco coir and a egg carton folded in half for height. Do they experience random die off as the Blaberus Gigantus do or am I missing a key husbandry item? I haven't had this sort of problem with any of my other Blaberus species. I would be okay if they weren't necessarily producing, but the die off rate is killing me. Just looking for general ideas that could be a problem or mistakes I made in their husbandry. I have a tall, bark lined tank with greenery I was going to relocate them to (At the same office temp.) But now with only three adults and 3-4 nymphs I'm not sure if I will even have them much longer then a few months.

I have had my madagascar hissing cockroaches for a pretty long while, I'd say... half a year, maybe more? I lost track of time. I started with 10 and now have an impressive colony, but so far twice I have gotten mutated juveniles who end up like this one? They are in a plastic bin with ventilation, and a water dish, but I do not spritz it because of the gnats that arrive when I do. They are housed on aspen, which I clean once every month or two, shaking debris to the bottom and picking out the molts. They have a humidity box (plastic container with coco fiber bedding that's moist, with egg-crate on top. They LOVE hanging out in it! They live for a day or two after I find them, then are deceased. This is the second one (bigger than the first, older) and I wondered, is this normal? Is it inbreeding, should I split my colony and get new ones from someone else? Is it humidity? Or is it just natural selection or such? I'd like to right it if it is an issue. (Although, admittedly, these make interesting specimens. And perhaps, by posting/sharing, good lessons?)

I received some orange heads awhile back. I split the group into two. One of the groups went belly up in the past couple of days... Care conditions: I was keeping them in a gallon jar with sphagnum substrate, placed in an incubator. Incubator runs 35 C or a bit higher. They had a mite problem that I was going to deal with when I had opportunity. The jar lid had perforations, but there was another container sitting on top of it. There are 2 other jars of roaches in the same conditions (N. cinereous and H. flexivitta - lobsters and giant lobsters) and both were fine. No major change in diet in the past month. I have not checked on them for 48-60ish hours (like 2-3 days) as we have had Thanksgiving holiday Break) When I observed: Most of the orange heads were on their backs with their legs twitching, the rest were dead. What I did: Pulled out the twitching ones and placed them in a clean jar at room temp with a piece of egg cartoon. I won't be able to check them again until Monday to see if any revive (roaches are in my classroom where I teach). The jar of death and its contents were wrapped in a plastic bag, placed outside in a snow bank for several hours (to euthanize the poor beasties and any parasites/pathogens that may have been present), then brought back in and place in a trash can in the hallway (so nothing from it spreads to my other enclosures) My thoughts: Symptoms look like pesticide kill (on backs, twitching) but so far as I know, no new pesticides have been introduced to my classroom, and we have not done any labs with volatile chemicals recently (I hate that solubility lab we do that involves naphthalene!) Also, the two other jars seemed fine, but were right next to the jar of death. I thought perhaps suffocation, as I know that the jar really is too small for the roaches I had in it. However, I thought that if it were suffocation, they would revive... when I left them, it did not look like they were reviving... perhaps the half dozen in the new jar will be right as rain on Monday more to add later, have to soothe infant now...