I discovered that there are a bunch of little beetles living in my dubia roach chow. Anyone know what they are? They're about 1/4" and red-brown in color. Can I keep using the food or should I dump it all and start over?
I know this isn't the best picture, but it was as good as I could get right now.
Most likely bol weevils, I get them in my Layena every once in a while. I put it in the blender, but I think you can microwave it for a few seconds or put it in the feezer over night to kill them.
I also notice that I had a couple black beetles in my roach colony. The thing is that I had / have alot (around 30 or so) worms. They kinda look like really small super worms but they are brown and black. I took out the roach chow that I had in there and there are still a few with my dubia colony but I have no idea what they are or how they got there. My chow is a mix that I made of cat food, dragon pellets, turtle pellets, and fish food. I will try to remove all the worms in a day or two but in the mean time I put all the old roach chow in a container to see if these worms will grow to figure out what they are. I had a dead adult male roach a couple days ago and another dead nymph today but I'm thinking that it was more chance then these mystery bugs.
My colony is not being feed from yet so I want to make sure that these bugs are not something that will harm it in the long run. I will try to get photos up soon to see if u guys can help identify them. Any info would be great b
i have seen a couple little black beetles in with my colony as well. not sure where they came from, but they look like this:
the one on the left, of course. i haven't seen any of the larvae in there. also, the adults i saw were dead - i haven't seen a living one yet. they are apparently called carpet beetles and they appear to be omnivores just like the roaches, so i don't think they could harm the roaches. they're just in there eating the roach food. of course, i don't like that idea either. anyone else have any input?