Parasites in my roach colony

Hi all.

I am tremendously upset at the moment as I have a parasite outbreak in about half of my roach colonies. I don't have time to make too long of a post at the moment, but long story short I was selling some old planted terrariums and clean-up crews for cash and the guy asked if I would have interest in some dubia roaches as well... Essentially save him some $$$ and get me one of the things I was going to buy anyway - more adult roaches for my expanding colonies.

You see where this is going, right?

I got the new roaches almost exactly a month ago. Put them in their own colony, decent assortment of maybe 20-30 females and 10-20 males. They're not all adults, but those that aren't are in their last instar before shedding and I'm just as glad to have fresh, young roaches to breed. I leave them be. Two weeks later, and it's sorting day. We've had a little bit of reproduction from that colony but significantly less than from my other colonies. Whatever, I don't know how the dude kept his roaches, maybe they'll produce more after a few months in my style of setup with high-quality food. There are also a some dead roaches in that colony, too, maybe more than would be normal, but I don't pay too much attention - there are always a few dead roaches.I clean out the dead roaches and old food, do my typical check-for-weirdness and put in fresh food. Everything /seems/ fine at that time.

Fast forward to today. There is a smell coming from my bug closet. Yes, a very, very bad smell. Normally, there is no smell, or if there is I would classify it, at worse, as "distinct", not as the "oh-god-what-is-that" brand of rancid.

You might be expecting it to be /that/ colony of roaches, but you'd actually be wrong. Oh no, the smell is coming from my hissing cockroaches... Most of which are dead with these disgusting little maggot-type things crawling out of them and a cloud of ??? flying in the container. Truly disgusting. Went from having a thriving colony of hundreds of hissing cockroaches to having - are you ready for this - 6. And who knows if those six will live.

Of course I kinda freak out. I go through all of my roach colonies - and yep, almost all of those new roaches are lethargic or dead and covered maggots. Furthermore, if looks like every single one of my adult colonies also has maggots in it, though most of them only have a few. Like at first I thought they were fine, and I wouldn't have noticed except I was being very thorough and found some in the bottom of the colony, squirming through the frass along with my buffalo beetles.

It's important to note that the new roach colony was directly on top of my hissers, which is probably why they were struck the worst. Additionally, all my other roaches except the new colony have been with me for months or years with no issue. The only creature I've added recently is my SO, and I don't think he has roach parasites. I guess it's possible the outbreak started in my hissers, but I've never had anything like this happen with them before and I've had the colony for longer than I've had Guacemole.

The good news is this: I kept my baby dubias in a different closet, and they look fine, so I do have a few hundred roaches that, as far as I know, have had no exposure. I also don't know of these pests - which are either flies or wasps - are actually what's killing my roaches or if they're just consuming the dead. Either way, I hate them and have a big problem on my hands.

Regardless... Loosing so many adults sucks. I don't know what to do, if I should try to save the colonies I have now. Normally my entomological fascination with figuring out exactly what the white maggots are would make this blow a little softer, but work is so busy and brain-intensive I haven't had a lot of spare brain-juice to expend on this sort of thing (one of the reasons I haven't been as active on here, tbh - for once I am in a job that gives me my fill of "figuring weird biology stuff out").

Egh. Is anyone has experience with roach-maggots, please let me know what you did about them. Any advice is helpful.

Thanks,
-Ellen

Ellentomologist":2e20e6j1 said:

I don't have time to make too long of a post at the moment

Click to expand...

:lurk:

Haha Just kidding with ya!

I'm sorry that's a huge blow! I haven't never had an infestestian like that and to be frank, I've never heard of that here either. And to be even more frank, you are the one best equipped for this out of all the people here combined lol.

Is it possible that it's actually a local to you fly that somehow got into your house? It's a possibility that the new dubias are just coincidence, but more than likely they aren't. Was just trying to get you to think from multiple angles.
Not that it necessarily matters where they came from, but it sounds like your whole closest somehow got infected.

Thank god you have a separate bin of babies to continue out.

Well, posting just in case you figure it out, or if someone else knows. I'm curious.

On a slightly unrelated note, I'm very curious as to your setup. Do you have pics of your colonies and closet?
What do you typically feed them?

-Brandon

LOL, I guess I have enough time to make a long post - more I don't have time to edit it! :lol:

Anyways, here's a brief update:

The bugs are definitely a type of fly and are definitely very gross. I no longer thing they are parasitic/parasitoidic, though, as I separated out all the live roaches into low-count containers (about 5-10 roaches per cup) and the roaches who died in containers that the flies couldn't get into did not develop maggots, meaning that something else is killing my roaches. I've never seen anything like these flies, though, and am still convinced they came in with the new colony. If the colony these roaches came in from was sick and the flies feed on dead roaches, it would make sense, you know?

In brighter news, it seems like only one of my three old adult colonies has been having abnormal die off since I posted, and only in about 1/3rd of the containers I separated it into. I think I might have caught it early enough to stop it spreading too far. I'm going to give it a good month before I put anyone back in their traditional set up, though, sterilize everything and give it time to run it's course on any currently infected roach. All of the new colony save for one lonely male roach has died now, but luckily all of my remaining hissing cockroaches are still alive and ravenously consuming banana as we speak. Additionally, no sign of any die-off or maggots in my baby colonies.

Brandon - I'll get you some pictures when I move everyone back into their old setups around Halloween. To answer your question very roughly, though, here goes...

Adult colonies are housed in 32 quart/30 liter Sterilite Latch Box - the ones like this. These have two vents cut into them - one on one of the short sides and the other on the lid.

I line the bottom with a thin layer of eco-earth or other coco fiber/husk medium and mist it lightly with water (usually DI water because I can't be bothered to find my other spray bottle and my bug closet is right next to my carnivorous plant shelf). I've experimented with a few different media choices, including bare bottom, but I've found the eco earth to be super beneficial in upping the humidity and giving the clean-up crew a place to live. Essentially, with the eco earth I get fewer desiccated roaches and less frass/dead roach build up. It does have the downside of giving the nymphs a place to hide, but I don't mind that as much because it just means there are bonus roaches I can hunt for if I'm every really in a pickle. The media should not be deep enough for an adult roach to successfully bury itself in. I only change the bottom layer every 4-6 months, except in the case something weird and funky (like maggots) is going on.

For the roaches to live on, I add 2-4 full sized egg cartons. The egg cartons should cover about 2/3s the floor space and half to all of the vertical space. I really prefer egg crate to anything else, but in desperate times I will use random pieces of cardboard packaging from work. The main goal is to have something the roaches can skitter around on and feel secure in while still having them be easily accessible. In my nymph set ups, I usually use cardboard rolls from paper towel and toilet paper. These are replaced as needed, as soon as they show any sign of mold or gross me out too much.

I then add the adult roaches at a 2:1-6:1 Female-to-male ratio, along with dwarf white isopods and buffalo beetles. I don't know if the isopods actually do anything, but I have a ton of them from my bioactives and they reproduce like crazy in roach colonies, so whatever. The buffalo beetles are the main clean up crew.

After about a day to let the extra moisture from the misting air out, I add their food and water source. This is to prevent molding.

What food and water source I give is slightly variable. I always make sure to offer carrots, though, as they are cheap, easy to store, and kind of just all around a wonderful roach food. In fact, if you are keeping any herbivorous species of arthropod, I absolutely recommend using carrots as a staple in it's diet.

Other then that, I always use a mix of about 1:3 marketed insect feeder food (Roach Rations, Cricket Meal, whatever so long as it's dry) to low-protein chicken mash or laying hen feed. I used to use crushed dog food, but found it molded too easily. The chicken feed is a bit more expensive, but works better and lasts longer, though you have to be more careful about add-ins like antibiotics and such.

Carrots and the mix described above are always available 100% of the time. The following food list is occasional or as available:
Cucumber slices
Banana Slices
Oranges (only occasionally)
Apple
Left over guacamole salad
Literally any produce scrapes that won't hurt the animals higher up the food chain

The chicken feed mix is usually left in for a full month and it usually pretty much gone by then. If it molds, I'll replace it, and it it's completely gone I'll add more. The carrots get removed weekly, or after they are to shriveled to provide nutrition or are just gone, whichever comes first (usually gone). All others are removed the day after they're added, the left overs dumped into my worm bin.

For water, I use .5-1% agar-agar gel, sometimes with cactus power added because... Why not? I find it cleaner than the water crystals most people use.

The water source and each food group offered except carrots I keep in an unglazed Planter Saucer for easy cleanup. Carrots get scattered wherever the heck I feel like they should be, while agar, chicken mash, and random treats get put in three separate saucers on the 1/3rd of the sterilite without egg crates.

For heat sources, um. Frankly I don't actually know what I'm going to do for heat in the new place. I used to use heating pads between the colonies, but I haven't been heating them for the past 3 months or so. Production has gone down a lot, obviously, but not as much as I had feared. I never really got to the 90 degrees F people recommended I use, though. Low to mid 80s is more than enough to have them breeding like crazy. When I get heating figured out again, though, I'll update this.

For my baby colonies, I up the moisture somewhat and keep the coco layer "damp-but-not-wet" to the touch. They get only a couple table spoons of chicken-mash-mix at a time and it's changed much more regularly to prevent mold.

For my feeder colony - The colony I feed directly to my animals - I don't use any chicken mash. I also swap their agar with whatever gel or slurry feed I have at the time - rep-cal, beardie buffet, the like. I'll also feed any pelleted foods for my animals that I know my animals won't eat to this colony - my mom got me a big thing of "Juvenile Bearded Dragon Pellets" and that's where it went, because Guacemole certainly wasn't eating them at any rate. I also give them reptile calcium and vitamin supplements - which you normally don't want to have in your roach colonies, as an excess of calcium on their diet will cause high mortality due to disturbed ability to shed old exoskeletons.

That's about it, I think. Kinda a rough and dirty post, but I'm sure you get the feel of it.

Cheers,
-Ellen

Thanks for the info. I was just curious as to how YOU in particular do it lol. Looking forward to seeing the pics.

I've recently started up a new colony after years of not having them. I had a huge thriving colony in the past that lived basically off of a chow mix I made (mainly from dog food and other items ground up) and water crystals. I hardly ever gave them veggies or other scraps.. besides oranges.

This go around I'm doing things different. They are basically only getting scraps, and the occasional dry food just because I got some with the colony I bought.
I have found though that they absolutely love cantaloupe rinds. I put some in thinking they'd only eat the flesh.. WRONG. They devoured it, faster than they do the oranges I put in on occasion. So now it's a staple I add in while I have it.

I also was trying out a bit of an experiment of not using any supplemental heat, but it's really not panning out well for my breeding. No real deaths or anything, but I'm seeing a lot of my colony growing into adulthood and no real babies being born.. So probably gonna go back to using a heat source.

Anyways, glad the fly issue isn't as bad as first thought. Let us know if you figure out what they are.

-Brandon

Hey Ellen,

I know your busy. Any update at all on your situation?

-Brandon