Taffer, awsome the buffalo worms are helping!! I wasn't sure if I was going to add them to my ivory head bin. But I added them a few days ago when I noticed I had a bit of moldy food in their bin. It got drug under some frass and I didn't notice it...then I found 4 dead adult roaches. Not sure if there was a correlation...but just in case I dumped a bunch of worms in the bin.
Dubia Roaches
- Thread starter Adriana0918
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When I say I have about 50 lbs of orange head roaches it's probably a bit of an exaggeration...but not by much.
This is a picture of the Colman cooler bin after I opened it and moved some flats to feed them. Most hid in the egg crates, but this is how many remained even after disturbing the entire bin.
[ximg]85426 5172913992[/ximg]
This is a picture of the Colman cooler bin after I opened it and moved some flats to feed them. Most hid in the egg crates, but this is how many remained even after disturbing the entire bin.
[ximg]85426 5172913992[/ximg]
Rankins, Not sure if you removed those dead roaches that may have eaten the mold, but you should. We had some roaches in the house several years ago but they were coming in when it rained, and coming in around the wood stove insert. The guy that came out to do the initial treatment said one of the great things about the roach killer they were using was the trickle down effect. The roaches would eat the poison, then go back into the colony and die, and the other roaches would eat the dead roach, then they would die, and so on and so on. If the strain of mold you had was actually toxic to the roaches, it could have a trickle down death.
Any idea where the mold came from? Did some food get hidden or fall down where you couldn't see it and mold? I bought a bigger bin for my roaches Friday. My current one is 27 gallons, but the new one is 45. It's a few inches taller so I should be able to stack the egg crates vertically, put one across the top to use as a food tray, and still have a comfortable amount of clearance, plus enough room end to end for when I combine both my colonies. I'd do that now but I'm curious when those 400 nymphs that are just turning to adults will start producing. I saw a female giving birth, or saw her standing in a egg crate cell with food, and when I opened the top to top off their water and check their food, all scattered except her. After food and water were taken care of she was still there, so I started watching her closer and saw a couple of small nymphs under her. I wasn't sure if they were just hiding from the light or newborn, but she was twitching some occasionally, and then she ran off a couple of inches for about 30 seconds and there were about 20 nymphs and several scattered (more may have already scattered I didn't see), but she came back and gave birth to a few more. I'm glad I saw that so I knew exactly what the newborn nymphs looked like, and sadly, my last order from Dubia Deli look almost the same size as the newborn nymphs I saw in the bin. The size I bought is sold out so I cannot see exactly what the description is at the moment, but I thought I bought mediums, about the size of a quarter, where these are much smaller than a dime in length. They are so small my bearded dragon won't even bother eating them, so I took them upstairs to put in good heat/humidity so they will grow to a better feeder size.
The buffalo beetles had kept my original colony pretty much odor free until the last few weeks when the odor was just getting a bit noticeable. Most people wouldn't have noticed it, but I've got a pretty sensitive nose (wish my eyes were still that good LOL). I put 120 buffalo beetles in the original colony I started over Thanksgiving weekend, and 120 in the insolation bin that had the 400 roaches with the mold, and they both cleaned up quickly. I'm hoping that is enough beetles to get them reproducing because the original 60 I had must have not come into contact with each other enough to breed effectively because I seemed to see fewer and fewer beetles.
Any idea where the mold came from? Did some food get hidden or fall down where you couldn't see it and mold? I bought a bigger bin for my roaches Friday. My current one is 27 gallons, but the new one is 45. It's a few inches taller so I should be able to stack the egg crates vertically, put one across the top to use as a food tray, and still have a comfortable amount of clearance, plus enough room end to end for when I combine both my colonies. I'd do that now but I'm curious when those 400 nymphs that are just turning to adults will start producing. I saw a female giving birth, or saw her standing in a egg crate cell with food, and when I opened the top to top off their water and check their food, all scattered except her. After food and water were taken care of she was still there, so I started watching her closer and saw a couple of small nymphs under her. I wasn't sure if they were just hiding from the light or newborn, but she was twitching some occasionally, and then she ran off a couple of inches for about 30 seconds and there were about 20 nymphs and several scattered (more may have already scattered I didn't see), but she came back and gave birth to a few more. I'm glad I saw that so I knew exactly what the newborn nymphs looked like, and sadly, my last order from Dubia Deli look almost the same size as the newborn nymphs I saw in the bin. The size I bought is sold out so I cannot see exactly what the description is at the moment, but I thought I bought mediums, about the size of a quarter, where these are much smaller than a dime in length. They are so small my bearded dragon won't even bother eating them, so I took them upstairs to put in good heat/humidity so they will grow to a better feeder size.
The buffalo beetles had kept my original colony pretty much odor free until the last few weeks when the odor was just getting a bit noticeable. Most people wouldn't have noticed it, but I've got a pretty sensitive nose (wish my eyes were still that good LOL). I put 120 buffalo beetles in the original colony I started over Thanksgiving weekend, and 120 in the insolation bin that had the 400 roaches with the mold, and they both cleaned up quickly. I'm hoping that is enough beetles to get them reproducing because the original 60 I had must have not come into contact with each other enough to breed effectively because I seemed to see fewer and fewer beetles.
Since I didn't have the buffalo worms in the ivory head bin the mold was missed. The roaches pulled the food under the frass. The dead roaches got thrown into my lesser mealworm culture bin. They ate em...
As for how to keep moisture from the worms and beetles...I put my roach food in a dish the beetles and worms can't get into. Remember I don't give the roaches water? I wet the roach food with orange juice and feed it to them. It hasn't seemed to be hard for baby roaches to get into. Hard to tell for sure though because I have so many. But the baby roaches are usually in the food dish, so they can get in somehow.
Remember I have a 60 CFM fan in my bin? I run it 24 hrs a day when I want to dry the bin out. Other times it comes on 15 min/hr, my bin has so many roaches the humidity gets high otherwise.
Obviously doing a bin cleaning and removing frass along with the above is wise if you ever want to get rid of the beetles/worms.
As for how to keep moisture from the worms and beetles...I put my roach food in a dish the beetles and worms can't get into. Remember I don't give the roaches water? I wet the roach food with orange juice and feed it to them. It hasn't seemed to be hard for baby roaches to get into. Hard to tell for sure though because I have so many. But the baby roaches are usually in the food dish, so they can get in somehow.
Remember I have a 60 CFM fan in my bin? I run it 24 hrs a day when I want to dry the bin out. Other times it comes on 15 min/hr, my bin has so many roaches the humidity gets high otherwise.
Obviously doing a bin cleaning and removing frass along with the above is wise if you ever want to get rid of the beetles/worms.
I think my bins have hit the pushover point. This time last month I was still misting the inside of the cages when I fed them to keep the moisture up. Now I've gone from small openings to opening the holes on the sides 100% and the humidity is staying over 60%. Once the AC is running more the humidity will drop some. Rankins, what type of timer are you using to turn on your fan 15 minutes every hour? It still may not work for me as this house was built in 1929 and although my PC's work fine, I've had a couple digital timers that won't work here, but work fine at my brother's house.
Those phorid flies are still bothering me. Some days they are totally absent, and others when I open the bins 5-10 fly out of each. Whatever they are their bite leaves itching spots for 24+ hours and considering my home office is in the same room, I get a few bites during the day. In some spots it looks like I have hives LOL. Opening the holes in the bins to drop the humidity didn't work, so I guess I'm going to have to clean the bins out 100% including frass and the egg crates to make sure I get rid of the flies, and move the bins to another room downstairs and hope they don't get back into the bins. Unless anybody has a better idea to get rid of them?
It didn't help that the original hydrometer was far off and when the humidity levels looked like 60%, it was more like 95%. The 120 additional buffalo beetles in each bin didn't eat the eggs and stop the flies either.
Those phorid flies are still bothering me. Some days they are totally absent, and others when I open the bins 5-10 fly out of each. Whatever they are their bite leaves itching spots for 24+ hours and considering my home office is in the same room, I get a few bites during the day. In some spots it looks like I have hives LOL. Opening the holes in the bins to drop the humidity didn't work, so I guess I'm going to have to clean the bins out 100% including frass and the egg crates to make sure I get rid of the flies, and move the bins to another room downstairs and hope they don't get back into the bins. Unless anybody has a better idea to get rid of them?
It didn't help that the original hydrometer was far off and when the humidity levels looked like 60%, it was more like 95%. The 120 additional buffalo beetles in each bin didn't eat the eggs and stop the flies either.
Oh, and my BD Monster is being a picky putz. My feeder Dubia supplier is out at the moment so I went to another person that was selling 100 adult Dubia males. Monster ate maybe 6 over 3 days, then simply stopped eating them. So I bought 500 medium from another vendor and those mediums ended up being smalls, so small Monster won't eat them. So my wife bought some crickets from the pet store, but all they had were small, and Monster turned her nose up at them. So I bought medium sized crickets from Fluker Farms, the size she ate for most of her juvenile life, and some a little bigger, and she again turned her nose up at these. I didn't offer her any food besides the crickets (dusted and not dusted both) for 72+ hours and she still wouldn't eat, but my wife brought in some dandelions and she ate those just fine, so she is just being a picky little witch. I've tried feeding her in a black bin, a blue bin, and I'll try again soon in a clear bin which is what she usually ate her live food out of, but man, she is being frustrating. No need to reply, I'm just venting instead of punting. 
:lol:
:lol:I just use a mechanical timer, it should work fine. If you have biting flies I don't think they are phorids. I don't think they bite. Sounds like the gnats that bite me when I'm bow hunting. They give me whelts that itch horribly bad. I'll try to do some research on it when I get time. The expo is this weekend and gotta get everything ready to get a payday. Should go well, 4 people have already told me they are coming to get some beaded lizard babies...but there are probably more that didn't contact me. Might sell out the first day 
I think once your buffalo worms population expands I think they will clean up the flies.
I think once your buffalo worms population expands I think they will clean up the flies.
I'm assuming the bugs flying out of the bin were biting. I wasn't getting many bug bites before or after the issue, but during the time we had the problem my daughter and I were getting bit a lot more. I don't know if I said this before but the problem wasn't so much the humidity as how I am watering the bugs. I use a shallow tray so even newborn nymphs can climb over the edge. I'm actually using the list of a deli meat my wife buys prepackaged with no nitrates and such. I fill it with hydrated water crystals and as they start to dehydrate, I pour some clear filtered water into the bowl and in moments the crystals are rehydrated and good for another day. I dump them frequently to keep any bacteria to a minimum, but I'm sure it is still cleaner than a lot of what they have access to in the wild. :0) The issue was when I was refilling the lid to rehydrate the crystals, I overfilled it a couple of times and the frass/food under the tray got wet and it was not drying out, so I removed the water and moved the food where it was off the floor until it dried out. I've not really seen more than a random fly here and there since it dried out.
I think my bearded dragon's eyesight isn't the best. There are several times she has looked at food and inspected it and inspected it, but won't eat. I can move the item to better lighting or against something with a better color contrast and moments later she will gobble it up. All of those adult male roaches I had that she refused to eat? I took one adult male that had just molted and figured I'd try again and carried it down in a cottage cheese container and Monster almost jumped into the container to get the bug, but the black bin I was feeding her in, she didn't eat anything in there. She would watch, but I wonder now if she saw the movement but wasn't able to tell what it was against the black background? She has eaten several adult males from my breeder colony over the past couple of days.
That batch of 400 Dubia I received just after Christmas that the Post Office held up and they were totally covered in mold? I saw my first female running around with her ootheca out today, so they are going to all be breeding in the near future. Hmmm, my original batch is ready to explode, and toss in 400 very young adults that are just starting to breed...looks like I'll be on E-Bay selling excess bugs in the not too distant future.
I think my bearded dragon's eyesight isn't the best. There are several times she has looked at food and inspected it and inspected it, but won't eat. I can move the item to better lighting or against something with a better color contrast and moments later she will gobble it up. All of those adult male roaches I had that she refused to eat? I took one adult male that had just molted and figured I'd try again and carried it down in a cottage cheese container and Monster almost jumped into the container to get the bug, but the black bin I was feeding her in, she didn't eat anything in there. She would watch, but I wonder now if she saw the movement but wasn't able to tell what it was against the black background? She has eaten several adult males from my breeder colony over the past couple of days.
That batch of 400 Dubia I received just after Christmas that the Post Office held up and they were totally covered in mold? I saw my first female running around with her ootheca out today, so they are going to all be breeding in the near future. Hmmm, my original batch is ready to explode, and toss in 400 very young adults that are just starting to breed...looks like I'll be on E-Bay selling excess bugs in the not too distant future.
This is a bump/repost for anybody looking for Egg Crates. I had found two sources that were much cheaper than anywhere else, http://www.eggboxes.com/Item/13 and http://store.timberlinefresh.com/SearchResults.asp?Cat=1913. The Timbeline site ships standard as $40/overnight shipping as most of their sales are live insects and such, but if you call them (number at the bottom), they will ship via ground service at a lower rate. I just bought 70 egg crates/flats, the 12x12 size for $19.60, and the shipping was about $10. Unless Eggboxes can ship for about $2, Timberline is cheaper. On the flip side, you can order online with Eggboxes, but the default for online purchases at Timberline is $40/overnight so you would need to either call them or e-mail their sales department at [email protected]. I just called them and spoke to a rep named Donna. She was a sweetheart and easy to work with, and I'll likely use them in the future. Eggboxes makes their own egg flats and bakes them so there is not risk of salmonella or parasites. Timberline resells egg flats and Donna said they do not make their own, but with the volume they sell and as picky as they are about their products, I really doubt theirs are recycled.
Taffer":2qg1wq56 said:
Hey, Rankins,
When you get time, or if you have a list, could you tell me what you put in the feed for your bugs. I have a partial list I was able to find, but I have not clue how much of each you're mixing into the final product. I'm assuming it's not all a 1:1 ratio or the bee pollen would probably get expensive. This is what I found...
chicken grains, kelp, alfalfa meal, ground birdseed, flax meal, wheat bran, oats, bee pollen, and a bunch of other stuff I can't remember.
That 12 pound bucket of Dubia Chow started going down very slowly, but then over the past 3-4 weeks I've been going through it a lot faster. The first month I had it the amount taken out was barely noticeable. This past month it has dropped from barely noticeable to dropping down to about 2/3 a bucket. In a couple of months it is probably going to be getting cheaper to just make food like you are.
You said you keep a side bin full of buffalo beetles. Do you just feed them the same thing you feed your Dubia/Ivory Head/Orange Head roaches? I'm taking baby steps towards moving my guys to the bigger bin and I'm pulling out a lot of baby buffalo beetles to raise for when I have to clean the bins.
Sorry to pester you so much, but what kind of bowl do you use that the roaches can climb in and out of that won't let the orange juice run out of the sides?
Thanks buddy. My solo time is dwindling down. My wife and daughter had left Sunday to visit some of our friends about 2 hours away and they are coming back with +1, so now I'll be in the house with my wife, daughter, God daughter, female dog, and female dragon. All of my daughters stuffed animals are females. We have had a couple of male Betta fish since Jocelyn was born, but neither lasted more than a few months. I swear I think someone assassinated them both! if I didn't provide a good income for the family, I'd sleep with one eye open!!! :lol:
When you get time, or if you have a list, could you tell me what you put in the feed for your bugs. I have a partial list I was able to find, but I have not clue how much of each you're mixing into the final product. I'm assuming it's not all a 1:1 ratio or the bee pollen would probably get expensive. This is what I found...
chicken grains, kelp, alfalfa meal, ground birdseed, flax meal, wheat bran, oats, bee pollen, and a bunch of other stuff I can't remember.
That 12 pound bucket of Dubia Chow started going down very slowly, but then over the past 3-4 weeks I've been going through it a lot faster. The first month I had it the amount taken out was barely noticeable. This past month it has dropped from barely noticeable to dropping down to about 2/3 a bucket. In a couple of months it is probably going to be getting cheaper to just make food like you are.
You said you keep a side bin full of buffalo beetles. Do you just feed them the same thing you feed your Dubia/Ivory Head/Orange Head roaches? I'm taking baby steps towards moving my guys to the bigger bin and I'm pulling out a lot of baby buffalo beetles to raise for when I have to clean the bins.
Sorry to pester you so much, but what kind of bowl do you use that the roaches can climb in and out of that won't let the orange juice run out of the sides?
Thanks buddy. My solo time is dwindling down. My wife and daughter had left Sunday to visit some of our friends about 2 hours away and they are coming back with +1, so now I'll be in the house with my wife, daughter, God daughter, female dog, and female dragon. All of my daughters stuffed animals are females. We have had a couple of male Betta fish since Jocelyn was born, but neither lasted more than a few months. I swear I think someone assassinated them both! if I didn't provide a good income for the family, I'd sleep with one eye open!!! :lol:
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