Dubia die off.

[KFuzz]

I've had this colony for about two months, it came to me already established for about a year. I haven't had any issues with any dying, in fact I haven't had any die until this point. The egg crates were getting pretty gross so I transferred everything to a new temp container on Sunday. Washed their home with a splash of bleach and lots of water, let it dry and could no longer smell bleach before putting everything back. I put in new egg crates and food, all was well until this morning (Tuesday), I have about ten dying roaches all of varying ages. They are belly up and twitching. Others aren't as active as they are normally.

So I cover all bases:
On Sunday I did change the room the roaches are in, although there is not a temperature difference.
I wasn't quite sure how to transfer roaches from nasty egg crates to the new clean enclosure, there was a lot of egg crate shaking involved, I worry I might have hurt them that way.
There are fresh molts in the container that look normal.
No mold or moldy food to be found.
I have not investigated in the egg crates much, I have one female with a protruding egg sack so I didn't want to stress her out more.

Any ideas on what might have happened, advice on how to proceed, and or words of wisdom for the future are all appreciated. Thank you!

 

[Soulwind]

Well a few die offs now and then isn't unusual.

However, to cover some things that might be going wrong:

1) What kind of egg crates are you using? You must ensure that
they aren't the kind with any chemical or preservative enhancements
for the egg freshness.

2) You may have not gotten things rinsed well enough and left behind
some bleach residue.

Don't really worry too much about banging them around, I do that to
mine all the time.

 

[KFuzz]

Thank you for your response! I might have preemptively freaked out too much. It looks like I have only lost 10. Sadly three of my big females and the rest are babies (which is very likely that I could have squished them at some point).

The egg crates I bought from a reptile supplier, so I'm assuming they are chemical free. At least the rest of my colony seems unaffected so far.

I guess the females either succumbed to old age or the stress from the cleaning. Just glad to know that banging them around isn't so bad.

Thank you again for the insight!

 

[jxl22]

Washed their home with a splash of bleach and lots of water, let it dry and could no longer smell bleach before putting everything back.

Maybe im just over protective with chemicals. But i always rinse anything i clean with chemicals twice with just water.

 

[KFuzz]

Washed their home with a splash of bleach and lots of water, let it dry and could no longer smell bleach before putting everything back.

Maybe im just over protective with chemicals. But i always rinse anything i clean with chemicals twice with just water.

Sorry that it isn't clear, but I did rinse multiple times. I was really worried about the bleach and probably won't use it again.

 

[Soulwind]

Several rinses with clean water should have been fine.

I don't usually bother with a bleach solution anyway, just because a good couple of rinses will clean out any buggie residue from the plastic anyway, and it's easier. Of course, I also swap out everything to a 2nd bin so that the first bin sits for a couple of months until the next cleaning time.

You do want to limit the banging and bothering as much as possible, just so you don't stress out the females too much, but it's really the only way to get them off the egg crates when replacing them, so it has to be done.

Yep if you aren't having a real mass die off, I'd say it's just natural deaths due to age/stress/etc... If you had anything truly toxic going on, you'd have a large percentage of the colony dieing.

 

[unkempt1]

Every time I do a total cleaning of the bin I experience multiple die-offs. Also, I use vinegar, not bleach. I'm too nervous to use bleach because you never know when you're going to miss a spot. :mrgreen:

 

[dociledragons]

I always thought a few would die off due to the stress of cleaning