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Seeing as my username on all the invertebrate forums is "Hisserdude", and it's an issue I'm passionate about, I thought I'd create a reference of what the PURE hobby Gromphadorhini are supposed to look like, since we are facing a mislabeling epidemic that threatens to inadvertently eradicate pure hisser stocks from the hobby over time, making lines less and less unique and different from each other. All coloration norms mentioned here are for adults, unless otherwise specified. Hisser nymphs of even pure stock can vary wildly in coloration, and thu

Thanks. My plan was for this setup to emulate a tree fall in a tropical forest with rotting wood habitat and some of the plants you would find in that kind of situation. This kind of habitat is always a good place to find insects and other invertebrates as well. I placed a particular emphasis on vining plants because many of these are characteristic of forest openings. There are also a lot of botanically-interesting vines to collect and grow. Here is a quick list with most of the plants in there... Aristolochia macroura Banisteriopsis caapi Cissus antarctica Ficus sagit

Hi! This is my report on a finding of an unidentified Perisphaerus sp. from South China, more specifically Macau Special Administrative Region (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macau). 1st March 2020, during one of my night anting (looking for ant queens), i found two small isopod looking cockroaches, one I was able to capture, the other one, escaped into the the existing crevices. It was my first local caught cockroach, but back then i had no idea what it was, and so I posted in facebook and someone helped if it as Perisphaerus sp. In an attempt to id the species, i contacte

I do think any Therea species would look awesome in there, willing you have many adults in there at once, just unfortunate they don't live long once mature, which may leave the enclosure looking empty for a while. Also maybe some Lucihormetica or Hormetica like you said would be nice. I find my adult Lucihormetica verrucosa like to hang out on the surface on top of bark and such, but I do have a good amount of adults in one enclosure, and it might just be they are a bit crowded. Other than that maybe some large Blaberus species like Blaberus giganteus or even Archimandrita species

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Relatively easy species to breed and care for.

These were collected from Tampa, FL. They have similar color to Ocala strain, but adult females develop yellow spots on the margin of their abdomen.

Happy Earth Day!!! 🌎 Hopefully the earth soars when we are set free just like this Crane Fly did. 😁 ft. Noah Campos New Video

Well I've bred Myrmecophilus without keeping them with ants, so I'm hoping I can do the same with the Myrmecoblatta, we'll see. I'm throwing everything I can at them diet wise.

Got the opportunity to draw some of my roaches for a school assignment These are just sketches, but I would love to do some nicely rendered art of them soon. I would love to see more art of bugs while I'm here! If any of y'all wanna share your art here, please do

I was lucky enough to see hundreds of these on a hike. Interestingly, only 6 of the ones I saw were females.

The sky

Hello everyone, Just wanted to check in. Its been awhile since I've been on here. Lots of changes happened. I moved to new state, new career, etc. I'm slowly starting to get my life around once again. Hopefully I can start breeding roaches once more. I miss having my roach colonies that I had to rehome due to relocating. Hope all is well with everyone. Have a good Day.

I collected them at Big Pine Key, FL under limestones. Apparently they are found throughout the Keys. I raised mine on fish flakes, squash, apple, and dog food.

Chick starter has DL Methionine in it...a man made synthetic chemical meant to replicate naturally occurring "Methionine" which is one of the essential amino acid proteins necessary for most life here on earth. It has been patented by the University of Florida as a "green" pesticide targeting insects with an alkaline gut physiology including termites, mosquitos, caterpillar/larvae, and our beloved cockroach....among others. It has been sprayed on stored grain for years, hence the reason you will find it in everything from Guinea Pig food, to Tortoise food. Its primary addition is to poultry fe

Super interesting and helpful. Also, the topic is kind of fascinating. I wonder what we will know about hissers in another 20 years. Our understanding of the various species may be very different.

All I can say is wow. This is amazing information for everyone out there. Thank you for taking the time to post this. Amazing work!

@Hisserdude has before. You can read about some general Eleodes care with a tad of specialized information for E.armata towards the end right here.

You could split the colonies by gender like I do, though be aware that the larger males will fight and can actually injure each other so you may need to further separate out some males. Otherwise, I would follow @hisserdude's advice.

For The Love Of Cockroaches is indispensable BTW. I don't think I would have gotten into the hobby without it.

My Polyphaga always did this, (a lot of my burrowing roaches did actually), problem is, even if you got a deep substrate, they do like digging to the absolute bottom, so there will always be some down there scratching away... Moving the container to a place where you can't hear them as much would be your best bet, I personally just got used to the scratching.

Eleodes obscura (adult female): Eleodes nigrina (adult female):

I didn't take it as rude. If my mistake makes people laugh, than I'm good with it. That's the bit of info I needed to know. Great details!!! Thanks!

Aww man . . . what a ridiculous oversight! I've been keeping bugs for over 20 years . . . just goes to show that even us 'old timers' can make a super rookie mistake! Thank you for pointing that out . . . yes, I've been meaning to type Porcellio hoffmannseggi this whole time . . . Guess that brings me back to my original question . . . Any good care info or links for Porcellio hoffmannseggi?

Of course almost every new isopod is the "biggest" but this is the longest species according to species literature (documented at 3.2 cm body length). The male has long uropods and tends to be longer than the female.

Thank you all for the warm welcome

I can provide a +1 for gasket tubs; they're perfect for these.

Sometimes the females look like they have glow organs but these are markings, not organs. A male without them is highly improbable but like big foot it can only be proven by its evidence.

I like the big Porcellio the most. Many of the Cubaris are nice/neat but I don't understand how little differences in color on relatively small pills that don't look horribly different from Armadillidium (which are bigger and come in brighter colors) are selling for $40-50 for one tiny specimen. Good thing about Cubaris is so far they seem to all be very easy so in a few years it's hard do believe they all won't be down to $10 a dozen.

The blog is back and ready to produce for your quarantined-pleasure! NEW POST!

He was very quick to reply with me, although I am hearing overall that is not the case. A friend told me that you have to bug him a bit to get a response sometimes. A frustrating situation to be sure. He should hire @Hisserdude or someone to help answer emails ;). Thanks, Arthroverts

If i keep food in there for all, will they not bother one another? I'm considering removing the roaches 1 by 1 and separating the isopods

Yeah Panchlora are kinda finicky, so I feel like keeping a prolific isopod species in with them that will directly compete with them for food would be a bad idea in the long run...

Im not too experienced with Panchlora, but i do know that Powdery orange isopods are one of the fastest breeding isopods, so down the line the isopods may try to outcompete the roaches for food, or if the isopods are hungry enough, *may* try to eat a molting roach, as they're more protein hungry than roaches are in my experience, however they would rather eat a dead non-moving roach than a live one. If you have plenty of leaf litter in their enclosure, it shouldn't be too big of a problem.

I do have an update: species confirmed. I think. I know I have this one in there, alive and kicking. I haven't seen any of the others in awhile, though. This one was actually found loose! I think it escaped early on, before I had them in proper containment, and it seems to have been pretty happy to grow and develop outside the enclosure. Probably in my houseplants. I did NOT sex it while I had it out, since I know these have a stink defense and I didn't want to risk it doing that. I'm actually going to be making a post elsewhere of rehoming these. I have some chronic fat

My Panesthia angustipennis angustipennis males are very noisy! Once in a while one of them comes to the surface and starts making noise by hammerings with its abdomen on a piece of wood. The wood and the enclosure kind of resonates and enhances the noise. I manages to make an audio recording with my audio recorder (see attachement). There is a lot of bass to hear (it's a decent recorder), and it gives a good idea what I have to endure here I', pretty sure this is a way to attract females. My question: has anyone observed a similar thing? 20200308_Panesthia angustipe

obviously, this is a joke...hopefully im not the only dork who thinks its funny lol. reminded me of catdog, instead its....roachroach?

Well I don’t think it’s about creating something more toxic. They usually look for another family of chemicals or a new mode of action. The problem is the companies selling over the counter. The problem is untrained individuals use chemical incorrectly and lead to the resistance. It’s all about following the label and knowing where and what to do with it. In my own observations I have found that the tiniest amount of pesticide placed in a perfect spot can crash the population. Most people have a more is better approach and make it worse. I have a saying. You can take a machine gun squirrel hun

There is a study with, I think American cockroaches in new york city, showing that they evolved an aversion / lack of interest in certian sweet flavors that were commonly used in pesticides. Natural selection doesn't mess around.

American Cockroach Society Wear I'm surprised this still works, it hasn't been updated in nine years.

On an opposite note, I remember when I use to provide pest control for a penitentiary. The basement of the facility was where al the access to the plumbing and electrical areas were. It was a constant 90 degrees and the humidity was equally as high. There were massive colonies of American roaches living there. The building was supported by concrete pillars and they would hang on these like herds of sheep. Moving as a group (not scattering)if you shown a flash light on them. The interesting thing is this area was lit 24/7. The did not hang out in the dim areas. We sprayed once a week and there

EDIT, Nov 2019: In light of new information, this species is NOT Hormetica apolinari, but Hormetica strumosa. A little less-showy than their relatives, Lucihormetica, these are a new addition to the hobby. What they lack in glowspots they make up for in size, robustness, the presence of prominent horns in males, and behavior. They are also quite prolific. Hands down one of the most rewarding species to keep.

Plants can survive with roaches in the short to medium term, provided you keep your roaches well fed at all times. I have kept ficus quercifolia with some rainforest species for a year, but the Vivarium eventually got taken over by hissers and they dug it up and chewed the fresh shoot tips. Cheers from Bill.

Hello! I want to show you some of my more uncommon [here in Europe] roach species. My foto size reduction is slightly better than in my last topic and I will further try to improve this. Melanozosteria nitida BRUNNER VON WATTENWYL 1865 (from Khai Sok in Thailand) Only under lights more redish than black, but look at the defensive secretion on their last abdominal segments. They are incredible fast runners. Thorax porcellana SAUSSURE 1862 (from India and Sri Lanka) Beautyful species from the Epilamprinae subfamily. Most fascinating ar

Hi, with African bullet roaches I tend to keep mine on 1" of dry coconut fiber substrate with 1/3-1/4 of the enclosure moist and some moss in a corner or 2. They enjoy mainly hiding under cork pieces or the leaf litter i provide for them. They seem to be fairly tolerant to drying out, but their ootheca seem to need a bit of moisture to hatch of course. Which is why I mist them weekly. This allows them to drink a bit and for the ootheca to hatch well. For heat I have kept them from room temp and up in the mid 80's. They seem to do fine at cooler temps, but they are most productive at aroun

Some news : I added more substrate so they can hide better. I also gave them pear's slices and they really like it. Also added fish food for proteins. Removing a piece of wood, I've found this big girl. I hope she will have babies soon 😍

Yes, unfortunately, the problem of hybridization is very acute. It is necessary to strictly label cultures and by all means prevent hybridization.

I have G. grandidieri from Jörg Bernhardt, they currently go with him like G. portentosa 'Black', and before, they sold him like G. grandidieri. Now the validity of the taxon is being called into question and many believe that it is just a black morph of G. portentosa. However, the description of the lectotype and paralectotype states that G. rgandidieri are completely black cockroaches. The genitals of males G. grandidieri, G. oblongonota, G. picea, G. portentosa and Princisia vanwaerebeki are identical, I prepared the preparations and compared them. It may well be that these are generally al

I guess we are good until our individual states start banning them.