I Found A Hisser In My Dubia Bin....

[hartungs]

Okay, so here is the deal. I came home from a week long trip and checked on my dubia colonly. Of course they had eaten all of their food and water crystals. So I replaced the food and crystals and then looked through the egg crates just to check on them. Well when I got to the last one, I see this HUGE roach crawling on the side of the bin. Now I know that smaller dubia are pretty good crawlers, but not the adults. So I looked a little more closely and saw that there were no wings at all. Then it started crawling straight up the side, even over the tape that I installed. So I went to flick it off and it "hissed" as me. It FREAKED me out. I had never dealt with "hissers" before. How did this get in my colony???? I have only purchased dubia from two sources and didn't notice it before. Do they look the same as dubia when they are juvenlies and then this thing just grew up with them?

So the very important questions I have for you are....Should I leave it in there or do I need to take it out? Will it bother the dubia? Will it eat the babies? WHAT SHOULD I DO?

Please help.....

 

[diggerdrake]

Hissers are cool. I would find a small (5gal) aquarium and keep it as a pet. They settle down pretty much and are easy to handle.

 

[invictusrules]

Ooooo... you lucky! A new pet. :lol:

Hissers do make great pets, but they like company. If you isolate him, he (or she?) might not live long. I've kept hissers for several years and I've never seen any of them bite/eat each other. The males will square off and hiss and waggle, but they don't attack each other. My hissers are pretty mellow - the Dubia are much more active - so my guess is that your new pet won't bother the other roaches.

 

[hartungs]

i did some reading and I think I should take the hisser out of the dubia bin. Apparently, they like to have "their" territory and try to defend it. I guess I will try to make a new enclosure out of an extra 5 gallon tank we have sitting around the house.

If anyone knows any differently, please let me know...

 

[jmiller]

If you do set it up in its own container, you should get a few more hissers to put in with it. Hissers as mentioned above are communal creatures and like the company.