Feeder Roaches Care Sheet & Setup!

This care sheet was created based on experience breeding several species of roaches. Roaches covered include B. dubia, B. discoidalis and B. lateralis. Click here to see a video on B. dubia and here for a video on B. lateralis. B. dubia roaches make great feeders for bearded dragons and various other reptiles and inverts. B. lateralis are a great alternative to crickets, about the same size. We feed them to tarantula slings and juveniles and are great for scopions of all sizes. We also breed B. discoildalis (discoids) which are similar to the B. dubia. Roaches have a greater meat to shell ratio, very little chitin and double the prorein of crickets. Overall better feeder.

All 3 of these species of roaches mentioned above can be kept similar way. There all non climbing/flying, live up to 24 months, range in sizes from 1″ to about 2½” as adults. Eat the same thing, need low-moderate humidity and high temps for breeding. Most important, they aren’t known to infest your home in the US, with the exception of Fl. where most are illegal to have, due to state law and they thrive in tropical conditions.

Temperature: 75-95 degrees (DO NOT DROP BELOW 68°F)
Humidity: Moderate 30-55% (Assures healthy molts)

SETTING UP YOUR ROACH COLONY!

You will need a Sterilite or Rubbermaid storage bin or something similar. 20 qt. – 55 gallon bins, depending on size of roach colony you plan on maintaining/breeding. Make sure that you get one that is a solid dark color. Do not use clear ones as they tend to let too much light into the roach colony. Since roaches are nocturnal and won’t mind living in the dark.

Cut a hole in the lid, about 8 x 8 on one end or a couple 2″ holes on the sides/ends if your going to stack the bins. This can be done by means of heavy duty scissors, utility knife or a drill hole bit. Please DO NOT let young kids attempt or do this step as it could result in serious injury.

OK, you’ve got your hole(s) cut, now you’re ready to glue some aluminum screen mesh over them for ventilation. Screen door mesh that you buy at your local hardware store works well since most feeder roaches cannot chew through it, but B. lateralis new borns could squeeze through. So be careful not to lean any egg flats against the screen. Cut your screen mesh a little bigger than the hole(s) you cut and glue it on with a hot glue gun. If you don’t have a hot glue gun, the hot glue sticks work just as well warming up the tip over a candle and applying it thoroughly around the edges. Take extra precautions when using an open flame and hot glue, can cause burns if mishandled or misused.

DO NOT use any substrate of any kind. Roaches make there own in the form of there feces, which is called “frass”. It may sound gross, but they also consume it as food, especially as babies. So if you forget to feed them one day, not to worry, there covered. B. dubia and Discoids are burrowers, so if you were to use substrate, it would make collecting your roaches for feeding and cleaning out your bins that much harder. So leave the substrate out. B. lateralis do not burrow, but are very fast.

Next, your going to need to put some egg crates/flats/cartons into your newly ventilated roach bin. You’ve seen egg cartons, right, well an egg crate/flat is one you would get when buying eggs in bulk. They measure 12 x 12 and hold 30 eggs. These work the best. Place them vertically, starting on one end or one side of the bin. You’ll need anywhere from a couple to whatever you can fit comfortably allowing room for food and water gel. Leaning them instead of stacking them allows the roaches easy access to hide and for there waste (frass) to drop to the bottom of the bin for easier cleanup. Leaning or stacking both work.

Now that you have the main essentials, provide your roaches with a couple shallow dishes or lids of high protein roach chow and water gel. The roach chow can be bought or made. Make sure you have roach chow available to your roaches all the time. There are many different recipes on the Internet, just do search and make what appeals to you. There roaches, there not to picky. But importantly, what you feed them, your feeding your reptiles and inverts. A good high protein cat/dog food with some fish flakes and mixed oats works too.

Water gel is must for keeping your roaches hydrated and helps humidity levels, important for molting. Water gel is made from dry water crystals. Water crystals are a water absorbing polymer that expands over 400%. You can purchase water crystals here or a other places on the Internet. Making water gel is eay. Just add 1 oz. (6 teaspoons) of water crystals into a gallon container, add water, and let sit for about 8 hours. Your roaches can crawl on in and around the water gel without drowning. Don’t put an open dish of water in either, unless you want to drown your newly acquired roaches, especially young roach nymphs. Don’t use sponges or cotton balls, they can harbor bacteria and mold, which is deadly, and you risk wiping out entire roach colony. Roaches will desiccate quickly without some source of moisture.

Other foods and water sources! Fruits and vegetables (whole or scraps) should be offered a couple times a week. Be sure to clean out what hasn’t been eaten within 48 hours to avoid fruit flies, ants or an outbreak of mold. Our roach colonies really enjoy oranges (roach viagra), carrots and bananas (peal and all). Additionally fruits and vegetables offer another great source of hydration and extra nutrition.

Heating your roach bin! Temperature, most IMPORTANT. Most feeder roach species come from tropical environments, so you need to keep there temps between 80-92 degrees. The reasons for keeping your temps up is simply, health/survival and breeding purposes. Roaches are very active at higher temps and less productive at lower temps. So, the higher the temps (don’t exceed 95°F), the faster they breed, eat better, and grow quicker. To heat your roach bins, get an under tank heater (uth) or a heating pad that DOES NOT SHUT OFF AUTOMATICALLY and place on one end of your roach bin. Safety precaution, hook up to a thermostat to control temps and prevent a fire hazard or other mishap. Those heating pads can get HOT.

Humidity is also important to your roaches to help promote healthy molting. Roaches need to molt in order to grow to become adults. A freshly molted roach will appear cream color and darken within 24 hours. Humidity can be obtained by keeping temps up, ventilation along with a full dish of water gel at the bottom of there bin on the warm side. Humidity should be around 30%-50% which will be adequate for most species of feeder roaches. As lond as your roaches are molting and growing, your humidity and temps are good. If you start losing roaches or see really mangled wings, then double check your setup and make adjustments.

Final step, add your roaches and enjoy!

Roaches are so easy to maintain. Depending on the size of your roach colony, maintenance only needs to done every 3-6 months (not like crickets, every other day). To clean your roach bin, take out the roaches, egg flats and all, food and water dishes, etc. Put them in another bin. After you have remove all the live roaches from the bin, you could dump the frass and extra debri in your garden or compost or just flush it down the toilet. Wash and scrub out the bin and add roaches back in. Wear rubber gloves when cleaning and wash up thoroughly when finished.

Personally, roaches are so much easier to raise and breed than crickets. No odor, no noise, very little maintenance, more nutritous, easier to handle and feed. How many roaches do you start with? That depends on what you’re feeding. Start a colony with at least 100 roaches. The more you start with, the quicker your colony will grow. The feeder roaches discussed in this care sheet, take from 3-5 months from birth to mature adults. Once matured they will live up to another 18 months on average. Adult B. dubia and B. discoidalis females produce 20-30 live nymphs about evey 45 days, give or take. So, if your not in a hurry, you could start out with nymphs (baby to sub adult). In a hurry, start with larger nymphs and several pair of adults. B. lateralis are egg laying. Eggs hatch between 3-20 weeks and are faster breeders than the other 2 species.

Here are a few tips.

1) Patience, it can take awhile to get a roach colony gong. Unless of coarse you buy a ready made colony of a 1000 or more with lots of adults. Once your roach colony is established, you’ll never have to buy feeders from your lps or online again, ever.

2) Have 3 bins. One for the breeders and one for the feeders and the 3rd for cleaning (holding bin). The less disturbance of the adults, the better and faster production. Check them once a week or how ever often you feel you need to to replenish there food and water gel.

3) When determining what size to buy or feed to your reptiles, measure the space between your lizards eyes and buy or feed roaches smaller. This will assure your pet can manage the roaches without any problems.

4) Roaches breeding to fast for you to feed off? It happens. Several options here! Lower heat, but never below 68°F. Low temps slow them down, so little or no breeding. Give some away to friends or sell off a few. Freeze what you don’t need, grind up and add back into there food source. But, DO NOT RELEAESE into the wild!

5) Collecting to feed your pets! Several ways of mamaging your roaches for picking up. Pickup egg flat by hand or strong tongs if the feeling of roaches gross you out. Shake roaches off into a plastic container like a large deli cup, shoebox size or similar container. You can hold the conrainer with roaches and let your lizard, etc. feed from it. So you don’t actually have to handle them with your fingers, although its not bad. They don’t bite, but do have a strong grip for there size.

6) Use a kitchen colander for separating or sizing for feeding specific sizes to your pets. For sorting new born B. lateralis nymphs for feeding slings, etc. either pull egg cases and wait to hatch. Or take a 16 oz deli cup, drill 1/16″ holes in bottom, place in a deeper deli cup, pour your roaches in and gently shake. Babies will fall through.

Well, I hope this helps you in deciding rather or not roaches are for you. As an animal enthusiast, its very satisfying to breed roaches for all our animals to eat and enjoy. As with handling any animal, wash your hands afterwards!

Valid comments on/about/experience are all welcome. Spam, hate, offensive, etc… will be ignored/deleted. Thanks for reading, Greg Hagedorn.

Molting Blaptica dubia Roach!

Click here to watch more videos!

After attempting to feed a tokay gecko a B. dubia roach, the gecko didn’t want it. A little while later I noticed the roach had started to molt, so I grabbed my camera and started filming. So, if you have never seen a roach molt, as I hadn’t, heres your chance. The total process was about 15-20 minutes.

Valid comments on/about/experience are all welcome. Spam, hate, offensive, etc… will be ignored/deleted. Thanks for reading, Greg Hagedorn.

Blatta lateralis (Turkestan Roach) care sheet

Blatta lateralis (Turkestan Roach)

Blatta lateralis roaches

Blatta lateralis roaches originated in tropical areas of Asia and Africa including Egypt, Libya, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, India, Soviet Central Asia, Kashmir and Afghanistan. Blatta lateralis were named after the Asian area of Turkestan, were they were once collected.  B. lateralis are a dessert species.

B. lateralis as Feeders, along with B. dubia, Turkestan Roaches are becoming a popular and easily bred feeder roach in captivity. A B. lateralis is about the size of a cricket & is about half the size of the B. dubia at adulthood and they have a similar high meat to shell ratio as the Lobster roach, making them excellent feeders. Much like Lobster Roaches, B. lateralis are very thin shelled roaches making them easy to digest. The best part, unlike Lobster roaches, they can not climb smooth plastics or glass surfaces, thus making them easy to keep in their breeding bin and in your reptile/amphibian housing. Males are tan, winged and females are blackish, bulkier.

These little babies are fast, also known as “Red Runners“! All you see is a blur as they scurry away. They move even faster than Lobster Roaches, which are known for their speed. B. lateralis roaches can be kept and raised in anything from 20qt. – 20gal. Sterilite or Rubbermaid type plastic bins. No substrate is needed for these roaches. Put in a few egg crates for hiding & breeding, a dish of high protein dog/cat food, a water source (water gel, fruits, veggies, etc…) and your good to go. Keep temps from 70*F-95*F and they do well. Humidity level of 20%-50% has worked well for me. Keep in mind, that to much moisture in container can and will cause mold, so best to ventilate to keep air flowing through at all times to avoid a catastrophe.

B. lateralis are very prolific breeders. also a reach adulthood in about three to five months like B. dubia and then usually live another six to twelve months. They do not give live birth but instead lay egg cases here and there in the egg crates, on the bin floor, etc, which they then hatch out later, usually within 2-4 weeks depending on humidity levels. Baby nymphs (see pic below) are about 1/8″ when they hatch. Good for feeding baby T’s & scorpions.

It’s been said that the males don’t fly, not completely true. They don’t seem to fly out of anything, but will fly from higher positions. Example: We have B. lateralis running around locally where I live, throughout the summer months. They will wonder in under the front door & make there way back to my room. I have sat there and watched several males just come out of nowhere, so it appears. What happens, is they climb and the flutter fly to a lower location. I find them often in other containers they landed in. If I don’t rescue them, they die. The males seem reluctant to fly out once contained, from my experience. Because B. lateralis are tropical, they will not infest your home if you live in the USA, excluding possibly parts of Florida that are more like tropical conditions. B. lateralis just don’t do well below 60*F. Overall B. lateralis are easy keepers and very fast breeders.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

This photo shows a bunch of new born (1-3 weeks old) ¼” B. lateralis nymphs that I sorted out to feed to my baby Tarantula slings. Slings are an expression used for baby Tarantulas that are generally ¼” – about 1½” legspan and don’t quite look like the adults yet. I use these B. lateralis nymphs to feed my slings and baby scorpions. There equivalent in size to that of a pinhead to ¼” cricket. Much easy to handle, cause they aren’t jumping all over the place. Oh, they may run onto my fingers or hand, no big deal. I always feed my specimens over a larger container, so if any roaches do fall off or escape from the feeding container, they just fall in the larger one. I then just pour them back into there holding bin. Simple and quick. I also like this particular species for feeding my babies, because if one of my slings should decide to molt, chances are the nymph isn’t going to feed on my incapacitated spiderling as a cricket would. To date, I have never had an incident using roaches, much better feeder in my opinion.

DISCLAIMER: Information contained herin is that of information research via the Internet and own personal experience in raising and breeding this species of roach. Any and all questions / comments related to subject are welcome.

Thanks for reading, Greg Hagedorn.

Raising, Breeding and using Roaches as feeders!

Adult B. dubia females

There are many types of feeders insects available for your reptiles, arachnids, amphibians, etc. The most common is probably the cricket. I myself started with crickets. Widely available at your local pet store (lps) and online via the Internet. Over the past decade, roaches, “yes cockroaches”, those little winged critters people think are a pest have entered the world of feeders.

Roaches are becoming more and more excepted in the pet trade as an alternative to feeding crickets. Although there are about 4,000 species of roaches, only 1% of those are said to be a pest and infest your home. In my opinion, after raising, breeding and keeping a few varieties of tropical species of roaches, I believe there misunderstood. Most people find them disgusting because of there reputation. Well, crickets are probably just as bad if not worse.

Some pros and cons of different types of feeders I use for my collection:

Tropical Roaches: Cost to purchase $0.075 – $0.35 ea. For ¼”-¾” nymphs via Internet.

Pros – Widely available via Internet, great meat to shell ratio, non flying/climbing of smooth surfaces (common feeders), little to NO smell, long lived (12-24 months for adults), NO escapees, higher protein value, easy care-clean every 3-6 months, easy to breed.

Cons – Don’t survive low temps below 60F, The “ewe” factor.

Crickets: Cost to purchase $0.015 – $0.15 ea. M/L thru LPS and all sizes via Internet.

Pros – Widely available, inexpressive, survive low temps down to 40F

Cons- Smell awful, escape while feeding, die off quickly and unexpectedly, short lived (6-8 weeks), very noisy when mature, may be difficult to breed, must clean daily to weekly to keep smell down.

Mealworms (Tenebrio molitor) : Cost to purchase $0.02 – $0.07 ea. M/L LPS all sizes via Internet.

Pros – Easy to keep, just refrigerate to slow production, easy to breed, widely available.

Cons – Fattening, hard exoskeleton (chiton – difficult to digest)

Superworms (Zophobas): Cost to purchase $0.036 – $0.07 ea LPS and via Internet

Pros – Better nutritionally than mealworms, can be used as a staple with certain reptiles, easy to keep (room temp, DO NOT REFRIGERATE), long lived.

Cons – May be difficult to breed, if fed in excess, nay cause impaction in young Bearded Dragons, bite and may chew thru thinner plastics, cannibalize each other if lack of moisture.

See for yourself, roaches are the better feeder (imo) and can be fed as a staple food source. The pros and cons are from my own personal experience. Do your research on the Internet and you will see others agree. I have seen about 28 different species of tropical roaches available via the Internet. Florida is one of the  state in the nation where it is against the law to purchase certain species of roaches due to the tropical conditions year round.

Some of the common varieties available in the hobby. Species in bold are some of the most commonly used for feeders in the reptile and invert hobby / profession.

Different types of roaches used as feeders and pets:

Blaptica dubia – Blatta lateralis – Blaberus craniifer – Blaberus discoidalis – Blaberus fusca – Gromphadorhina portentosa – Eublaberus prosticus – Eublaberus distanti – Polyphaga aegyptica – Archimandrita tesselata – Byrsotria Fumigata – Byrsotria Rothi – Hormetica Subcincta – Blaberus parabolicus – Blaberus giganteus – Blaberus hybrids – Blaberus colloseus – Blaberus boliviensis – Gromphadorhina oblingata – Gromphadorhina grandidieri – Elliptorhina javanica – Elliptorhina Chopardi – Princisia vanwaerbecki black – Nauphoeta cinerea – Neostylopyga rhombifolia – Panchlora nivea – Phaetalia pallidus – Rhypharobia maderae – Corydia petriveriana

2¾" Male B. fusca

Roaches kept as pets: Some people keep Blaberus fusca (Swarf Cave Roach) and Gromphadorhina portentosa (Madagascar Hissing Cockroach) as display pets. Yes, display pets. These species of roaches range in size from 2¾” – 4”. A rather large roach. These large behemoths have quite a grip too when handled. The Blaberus fusca make a beatiful display as both males and females are winged.

Housing and feeding: If your just using as feeders, then there setup needs are very simple and minimal. I’ll give example for B. dubia and B. lateralis. You can use any smooth plastic Sterlite or Rubbermaid bin/tubs anywhere from 20 qt tub up to 55 gal bin for housing. Put a piece of screen in lid or on sides for ventilation. No substrate (soil) is necessary for these species. Egg flats, paper towel or toilet paper rolls work well for a hiding place. Roaches are very private and prefer not to be seen. No lighting, instead use a human heat pad without auto shutoff or heat tape/cable hooked up to thermostat for heating. If your breeding, then temps between 85F-95F are required. Moderate humidity to promote good molting for continued growth. Feed high protein dog/cat food, vegetable/fruit scraps. Water gel is best for there moisture needs. You could also just use oranges. Water gel works both as a moisture source and provides adequate humidity.

¼" B. dubia nymphs

Breeding: Roaches either give live birth or lat egg cases (oothica). B. dubia roaches are live bearers. Each adult female is capable of producing 20-30 ¼” nymphs (white) every 30 days or so. When mating, the male will dance around the female with his wings spread to try and impress her. If successful, she wil produce an oothica (egg case), which she caries inside her until giving live birth. Once in awhile she will push the oothica out her rear end and rotate it and pull it back into her body. So don’t be alarmed to see something sticking out, it’s OK. Keep your m/f ratio about 1-8. The B. lateralis are egg layers. They produce an egg case (oothica) every couple weeks after breeding and paste them under the egg flats or drop them on the ground. They produce a few less, but none the less a lot overtime. The egg cases can take anywhere from 3 – 20 weeks to hatch depending on humidity levels. Babies are about 1/8” in size (great alternative to pinhead crickets).

B. lateralis mixed

Feeding your pets: I use two types of roaches as feeders for my reptiles and inverts. I use the B. lateralis (all sizes) for my Tarantulas (slings and juveniles), Scorpions (babies and adults) because they are similar size to a cricket (about 1/8” – 1¼”), don’t burrow and are very active, good attention getter. I use B. dubia for my larger Tarantulas and Beard dragons. One of the drawbacks for feeding these to your Ts, is that B. dubia either play dead or burrow. Either way the Tarantula ends up getting them eventually. If the roach burrows, it usually will reappear at night when your Tarantulas active. If breeding roaches, feed your excess males off first.

All the above information is from my own personal experience with the species of roaches mentioned. If I left anything out or if you have questions or requests, just leave a comment. You could also look me up and follow on Twitter.

Thanks for reading,

Greg