First roaches!

[Shawn H]

I just got my first colony of hissers today. Got them from a local reptile swap. About 3 adult females one adult male and about 10 mixed sized nymphs for a good deal. I'm pretty excited about it , they are really neat. I have them setup in a 20 gal. plastic tote on coconut fiber with sphagnum moss covering half the bottom and a hollow peice of cork bark in the middle. Using a vasaline barrier and a lid with some very small holes I've drilled in it. Got a few peices of quencher gel bites some commercial cricket diet and some fresh fruits in the food dish at the moment and they are chowing down on the chopped peach and plum like there is no tommarrow! I'm keeping them at about 80F or so and they don't seem lethargic or anything like that so I think thats warm enough.

But anyways I'm pretty excited about this I orginally wanted to get them as a feeder culture but now I'm thinking they are so cool it's gonna be almost a shame to feed the overflow off. My girlfriend is being pretty cool about it, she even held some of them. I woulda never thought a month or 2 ago that'd we'd have roaches in our home and be excited about them! I'm glad I gave these animals a chance, it's only been one day so far but they seem really cool.

I was wondering tho, Is it normal for a colony of hissers to have alot of variation in color among the group? I mean some of these almost look like tiger hissers, some are very typical madagascar hissers and some are close to black. I just thought that was interesting , anyways thanks for any feed back you may have...

-Shawn

[Zephyr]

Welcome to the hobby! Just pray you don't get fruit flies. XD

As for color morphs, I've noticed a lot in standard hissers too. I guess it's all in the genes.

BTW, without proper feed-out flow, you will become overrun with roaches.

However, this is also a perfect business opportunity!

Wait about... I'd say 7-8 months for your colony to become "established" then start feeding out.

Good luck and have fun!

[Shawn H]

Welcome to the hobby! Just pray you don't get fruit flies. XD

As for color morphs, I've noticed a lot in standard hissers too. I guess it's all in the genes.

BTW, without proper feed-out flow, you will become overrun with roaches.

However, this is also a perfect business opportunity!

Wait about... I'd say 7-8 months for your colony to become "established" then start feeding out.

Good luck and have fun!

Thanks for the welcome! I really do hope my hisser colony does explode in population, I've got a collection of hungry monitors to feed that eat about 6 mice each daily and it's becoming pretty expensive. Also im sure some of my other reptile loving friends would love to get some roaches for their pets.

[Allpet Roaches]

I enjoyed reading your explanation of your excitement about them. There is a lot of variation in the coloration of normal hissers though some stocks are less variable. I've seen the normal hisser coloration that has a pattern sort of like the tiger hissers but in my mind it's not even close.

[Shawn H]

I enjoyed reading your explanation of your excitement about them. There is a lot of variation in the coloration of normal hissers though some stocks are less variable. I've seen the normal hisser coloration that has a pattern sort of like the tiger hissers but in my mind it's not even close.

That's pretty interesting, but yes the tiger like ones arn't nearly as nice as real tigers look. They kinda remind me of a watered down version of the real deal. I bet as the colony overtime ages the colors will become more uniform as they will be all eating the same diets. The ones I have could be mixed from several seperate orders of roaches because the guy I got them from just used them as feeder mostly. I had to pick them up cause the price was right, can't beat $10 for a cup of about 15 mixed sized hissers, mostly mid sized nymphs a few fat females and one huge male. Not to mention no shipping cost. Prolly gonna have to order anything more exotic I want though because these were all he had.