Nanchantress

I use Repashy Bug Burger for my dubias that I feed to my leopard geckos.   The dubias love it.  Their 2nd favorite food is fish flakes.  Carrots are a distant 3rd. 

I vote for Peppered Roach - Archimandrita tesselata as being most charismatic.

I had a colony of about 50 Halloween hissers, and rarely, maybe never, heard a peep out of them.

Try taping several layers of red cellophane gift wrapping paper over the end of the flashlight. That works ok too.

This sounds like a cool project. Do you know him? I might donate $20 so I can get the secret to telling males from females - hahaha! (beetles, that is...)

Later... Just donated! My very first crowdfunding experience

Don't you just love their little orange faces? I feed mine lots of dead oak leaves and occasional carrots, cucumber, and squash. Like I said above, they do not each very enthusiastically - but if you spy on them in the middle of the night you might see some activity. I bought a red-bulb flashlight that doesn't disturb them in the dark. Best for spying - haha!

I don't actually measure the humidity - I just spray it good a couple times a week and adjust the lid opening as needed.

My substrate is about 2 inches deep and half is completely dry and half is kept moist with regular spraying. I have found roaches hiding under cork pieces in both sides - not sure which they like better.

Mine have had deformed wings like that when I did not keep the enclosure humid enough before their final molt. I now keep my nymph enclosure quite humid and have had better luck. Once they get their wings, I move them to the adult enclosure which is kept more on the drier side.

My L.subcincta like plenty of dead oak leaves and coconut fiber substrate to bury themselves in. I keep half the substrate moist and have pieces of cork for them to hide under. They stay hidden most of the time. They are not big eaters and as far as I can tell mainly eat dead leaves. I keep mine at room temp (about 70*F) which is probably why they are slow to reproduce, but over a 2 year period I went from 11 nymphs to about 60 now.

No, the male does not glow because his diet does not include the bioluminescent fungi they would eat in the wild. I feed them dead oak leaves and carrots which, I think, is why the spots are so orange instead of yellow.

Thought I would share pics of what those cute little nymphs turned into. Out of the 11 nymphs I bought from herpetologyfrk in February 2012, only 1 turned out to be male. He has been very busy, however, and I now have easily over 50 offspring !

You are both right! Family: Thyreocoridae Species: Cydnoides renormatus. This forum is so awesome. Thank you!

So I think it isn't the Ebony Bug then because it looks exactly like the picture of Cydnoides renormatus that I found on the web.

Amazing what you can find in the backyard when you stop to look Doesn't seem to be much info on the web about them - at least info that non-entomologist-type-people like me can understand.

Forcep, thank you!!! I just looked them up on Google and it looks like the common name might be Ebony Bug.

Attached is a picture I found on a site that called them a type of Guyana True Bug. I wonder what they are good for? Maybe the little blue tailed lizards around here eat them...

Thank you so much for identifying them for me!

To me it looks like it was bitten by another roach or injured while it was still soft and vulnerable right after molting. And the yellow gooey stuff is maybe leaking fluid from the circulatory system?

Here is another picture...

Sorry for the picture quality - these are tiny! All over my sandy, sunny,dry backyard today.

Sorry for the late reply - I haven't been on roachforum for a long time... I have Peppered roaches and the gestation period is 6 months! Then you have to wait 9 months for the nymphs to mature into adults before they can continue the cycle. This is a species for very patient people But they are VERY gentle as others have mentioned and I find that the adults are much calmer than the nymphs, but no difference between the sexes as far as personality. They do not fly, but if you have a tall enclosure, when they start chasing each other around (usually around midnight- haha!) they can sometimes flutter from higher levels to lower levels.

Kyle, this article and video was posted on USA TODAY today! You're famous! I am emailing the link to all my friends, saying, "See, I'm not the only person who loves cockroaches!"... hahahaha! Good job! http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/08/21/roach-man/2682823/

Thanks for the link to that article, MrCrackerpants. I found it to be very interesting!

Well, when i accidently cooked 2 roaches I think i was using 50% power and they didn't explode. Might just have to experiment.

Hey, thanks for sharing this - I might give it a try I wonder if it would freeze well...like in ice cube trays...

Thanks for sharing! Good photography!

I uploaded this to youtube so you all could see it. I noticed an expelled ootheca in my Madagascan Hissing Cockroach enclosure and was about to discard it when I saw something move. To my surprise, there was a nymph wiggling a little bit so I grabbed my camera and started recording. I don't know how long the ootheca had been sitting there before I noticed it...probably only a few minutes I would guess. Hope this link works...it's my first time on youtube...

https://www.youtube....Qk&feature=plcp

Can anyone provide a link to the actual laws governing cockroach ownership in Tennessee and Florida? What government agency prohibits it? I am putting together a powerpoint presentation on the cockroach hobby for my turtle club and would like to include that information. Also, if you have a link to the actual law regarding the legality of shipping cockroaches through the mail, I'd like to include that. If anyone knows of other states that have restrictions and knows where to find the law, let me know. Thanks!