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Red Runners Diet


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1 hour ago, Hisserdude said:

Do you use a under-tank heater or something? If so you may have steam cooked them, the heat may have built up and with no ventilation it would have nowhere to go, so they may have just gotten way too hot and steamy. 

I do have under tank heat, this is probably what happened. That is a very good point about CO2 build up as well, I did notice most of the roaches on the egg crates were fine, but all of the ones on the floor were already dead or twitching and not walking correctly.

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24 minutes ago, cab5392@ said:

I do have under tank heat, this is probably what happened. That is a very good point about CO2 build up as well, I did notice most of the roaches on the egg crates were fine, but all of the ones on the floor were already dead or twitching and not walking correctly.

Well then, sounds like things got too hot then. Hopefully the surviving individuals will breed and get the colony up and running again!

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Ugh, I hate when I put a lot of time and effort into a post and either the browser dumps it, or you hit the backspace on the keyboard and the website goes back a page (like hitting ALT+LEFT ARROW) and stuff like that.  A lot of times when I notice I'm getting a bit long winded, I'll copy everything over into a Word document and copy the text back over to the forum when I'm done.  I did that with that new thread that has all the information Q&A with that professor a bit ago. 

I didn't think about different species having different hardness of exoskeleton's, although I did recognize it some visually when looking at some roaches in photos.  I just did a quick search on red runners and it seems they are able to survive and breed in normal home temperatures over Dubia and Orang Heads, and that was a selling point on these bugs in the house.  :0)

Speaking of late entries.  I typed 99% of this yesterday, and hit send today.  :-p

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13 hours ago, lovebugfarm said:

Hisser dude may have nailed it here a heat plus lack of ventilation sounds like the issue. The only time I have had issues similar to offgas 8n roaches is when I do a big harvest and have roaches in a separation bin to long where there is like 3inches of roaches in the bin. The co2 they breath out is heavier than air and can cause suffocation. Now I use bigger bins where they are never more than half an inch deep. Roaches are surprisingly heavy breathers so ventilation is crucial.

Very true, and I believe roaches breath through their bodies, which is one reason they can survive without a head. 

Sorry you ran into that issue...but thanks for sharing so hopefully we can learn a lesson from you without repeating it ourselves.

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Yeah my husbandry has gotten much more lax in the past few months with having a 5 week old baby and at times cranky wife lol. She gets upset if I spend to much time on my bugs. I have to spend 4hrs a week minimum just feeding spiders. 

Some other feeder suggestions similar to red runners are African bullet roach and red goblins. All produce ootheca and nymphs can't climb also mostly the same size.

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4 hours ago, lovebugfarm said:

Some other feeder suggestions similar to red runners are African bullet roach and red goblins. All produce ootheca and nymphs can't climb also mostly the same size.

African bullet roach nymphs can climb very well actually, though mine tend to stay away from the lid.

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5 hours ago, lovebugfarm said:

With having a 5 week old baby and at times cranky wife lol.

I'm guessing a lot of the wife's issues (besides general exhaustion) are hormone issues as her body gets used to not being pregnant again, and breast feeding if she is doing so.  If your wife increases her water intake daily it will probably help with the crankiness a lot!  When my wife was pregnant, I accepted that she was going to be a bit cranky for the duration, but one day she crossed the line a bit (I don't recall about what), but she saw it in my face that I was tempted to respond, but didn't.  She asked, and I told her I knew it was her pregnancy hormones going crazy and she was baking us an awesome kid, so I was going to let as much of the craziness slid as possible until she was back to normal.  Now my wife worked as a massage therapist at the time for a chiropractor, and is one step away from a full blown tree hugger.  She wasn't going to allow herself to be snippy with me, even if she was going crazy with hormones.  I really do have an amazing wife.  She started doing research that following day and talking to doctors and they told her to increase her water intake which will help flush out the excess hormones, and she never snapped at me the rest of the pregnancy, at least related to hormones.  I am a man and I need to be yelled at from time to time, like we all do.  :0)  Besides, increasing her water intake will probably be good for her all around anyway.  Not only would it help flush out the excess hormones, it should help her feel better all around.  I was lucky though.  I had enough vacation time saved up that I could work 1/2 days for the first 6 weeks after our daughter came home, and my wife would be up with the baby from about 7 am until 9 pm, and I'd get up about 7 to spend time with my wife, and be up with all night playing on the PC or whatever, and work from about 6 am until 10, then go to bed.  We were both able to get good chunks of sleep like this.  Although our daughter is 6 1/2 and still doesn't sleep through the night as much as we'd like LOL.

The best teething chew toy we ever found was one of those dive sticks for pools...it was awesome.  It had a neoprene rubber center with sand around it, all tied up inside a tough cloth cover.  It conformed to her gums better than anything you could buy in a store for this, she was biting on sand through the cloth which felt great to her while she was teething, and it had been in my brothers pool for more than enough time for the bleach in the water to kill any bacteria.  You could soak it in her favorite juice and put in the freezer to help number the gums as she chewed on it as well.  With all the stuff babies put in their mouths anyway from the floor or ground, this was the least of our worries. :0)

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I didn't mention this before because I didn't want to overload Amanda's breeders ability to produce and have her rob the bins too often.  So, for anybody that buys feeder Dubia for their animals, the link below is the best value I've found for small/medium sized roaches.  The eBay user name is Aman-Bent (Amanda Bently) and she ships from Ohio.  She has been absolutely great to work with, even with the bad shipping issue we had, which was the fault of the Post Office, not hers.  I ordered 400 Dubia before Christmas and the local main hub post office received the bugs in maybe 3 days, but they were so slow in getting them out to our local PO (maybe 25 miles), that it took 10 or 11 days for the roaches to arrive.  She ships the roaches with a heat pack, and packs them into plastic containers with oats and carrot slices so they have plenty of food and a source of hydration for the trip, but with the amount of time the post office held the shipment, the entire container of oats and roaches were covered in mold.  A big chunk of molded oats stuck to the top of the container when I opened it because the mold was so thick.  I was expecting the mold to kill the roaches, but out of the 400, only 5 were dead.  It wasn't my fault the order was held up, and it wasn't her fault, so I didn't expect her to ship me a second order for free, but she did.  I tried to send her money via her eBay account and she wouldn't accept it, and sent me a second batch of 400 roaches which arrived in about 2-3 days.  Besides those 5 that died in the mold, her deliveries have had 100% survival rate, even though the first order arrived 2 days faster than the eBay tracking said (my fault for not double checking), but even after sitting in the mailbox for 36 hours, and half of that being below 30 degrees, 100% still arrived alive. 

200 small/medium roaches (primarily medium with a few small) for $15.  That is lower than I've found anywhere else.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/182407138933

As far as the bin of 400 molded roaches, the following week after arrival 3 more died, although it may have been molting...I didn't look too close.  I don't think any have died in the past 3 weeks, and they have eaten the mold off of each other with no ill effects as of 2 weeks ago, or molted off the mold, and have been growing and appear to be as healthy as any others in my breeding bin.  I just checked just now and they are all alive and well, although they are still in "Mold Quarantine" LOL.  I may just let them grow into adult breeders and feed off the males.  From what the professor said, there are a lot of types of mold that will kill roaches fast, and a lot of types of mold that won't effect them negatively, and apparently the strain of mold we had was the latter. 

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Oh lol my read something wrong was directed at the post about african bullet roach nymphs climbing after I had said they didn't. I guess we hit post at the same time. I think most of my wife's issue is that she's getting lonely staying at home while I spend so much time working, carding for my pets, and cleaning the house. She feels like she isn't getting enough attention. I love the part about tething I need to re-read it but I'm sure I will be needing it in a few months. Thank you for the review and info on your dubia provider she sounds great I may be boosting my colony soon. :) Sorry my reply is short it's a busy night but didn't want to leave you hanging after such a thoughtful reply.

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