Lobster roaches

[INCA]

so i have a dubia colony going and i need something else too feed and brred for my 6 adult dragons... are lobsters a good choice..and i need some thing that will breed FAST AND ALOT!! and how big do they get??

thanks Dominic :lol:

 

[patrickb]

Yes, lobsters are a good choice if you can stand a species that can climb glass. You will need to use vaseline in their totes and even the container (or your beardies home) where you will feed them. I think they are probably the fastest breeder in the hobby right now and pretty cheap to start with. They are slightly bigger than crickets, around 1.25" or so. The whole climbing thing has kept me from ever owning any, but the vaseline will contain them just fine. I just don't feel like messing with vaseline.

The alternative to Lobsters is Turkestans (Blatta Lateralis). They do not climb glass and breed almost as fast as lobsters. It is insanely fast once they get up and running, so I can only imagine what Lobsters would be like. They are an egg-laying species (lobsters are a live birth species) so you will have eggcases all over the breeding tote. The fact that they deposit their oothecae (eggcase) is probably the only thing that keeps them from producing as fast as lobsters. Both species are excellent choices for a fast breeding feeder, but I just prefer the Turks since they can't climb glass and that means I don't have to mess with putting vaseline on everything they are gonna be fed in or bred in. Each species is priced similarly to crickets, so it isn't all that expensive to get up and going with them.

 

[INCA]

with the turks do you have to incubate the eggs

 

[patrickb]

No incubation, just leave them where they were laid. They will hatch just fine. Keep the relative humidity above 30% and you will have a ton of babies before long. The only downside to the egg laying is that it isn't as clean as a live birth species would be and with the eggs being exposed, they are subject to being eaten by other roaches. All of the eggs don't get eaten, just one or two here and there on occasion. It does happen and like I said, that is probably the only reason Lobsters breed faster. Even with that in mind, they are said to be very close to Lobsters in speed of breeding, some saying even. I don't have Lobsters so can't give a good comparison, but they put crickets to shame as far as production, if that helps.

 

[INCA]

do you know where to buy em???

 

[patrickb]

viewtopic.php?f=76&t=94740
Check out my post there for a place to buy them from and my thoughts on it. Hope that helps ya!

 

[INCA]

so i read it and wit my luck they are sold out.. lol.. but you said they had crazy dieoffs??

 

[patrickb]

Yep, at 20-30 a day on average, I lost at least 300 of the original 1k I had ordered. I didn't keep exact counts, but it was pretty close to that. When they came in, there were some dead and I thought this to be somewhat normal (specially with my experience with crickets) One thing I would note, there was no food or water source in the shipping box. A small piece of dogfood and a slice of carrot or potato would have helped with the shipping stress. The cause of the die-off is a mystery to me still this day. I never contacted the vendor as I was too busy to worry about it, and it was more of a test thing than anything else. I wasn't sure I would be breeding them, but wanted a good sample.

I can directly attribute the die offs to that particular batch. I had a much smaller colony (50 or so roaches) that I ordered about a week or two before from another vendor (which I want name or recommend) that all arrived alive and just fine. They were kept in the same area and exact same conditions as the ones from thebugpros and even fed the same food and water crystals on the same days. After about a week and a half, the die offs stopped almost immediately and they have been thriving since. I suspect possibly they may have been packed and kept packed in the shipping box for a few days before shipping, or they just weren't well taken care of to start with. Then again, so many variables, like I said it could have just been bad luck of the draw on my part. I have read good things about that website previously which is why I decided to order from them. There appeared to be of the right quantity and more specifically, the size I ordered. If I should ever need to replenish my stock of Turks (yeah right, these guys put rabbits to shame) I would keep them in mind as a source and give them a try again possibly. That's just my thoughts on it overall. If I had contacted the vendor after receiving them I might have better answers, but since I neglected to do that, its up in the air as to the cause. IIRC, the weather wasn't all that bad here, peaking in the mid 90s. Could have gotten a little hot inside a postal truck maybe, but I would have expected many more to be dead if that had happend when I received them. The die offs over the week and a half that suddenly stopped is what has me stumped. Irregardless, I have a healthy colony from that batch alone so it wasn't a loss.

 

[INCA]

with what ive read and heard in the last few hours, i heard some negative things.. so i think i will just go buy 100 more adult dubias.. lol

 

[bigmac1]

i also have a colony of turks and dubias, but turks are not a bad roach i would pick them over lobsters because they can not climb glass or anything else that is smooth, i also ordered from the bugspros about 6 months back and i did not have any die off, so in about a couple of monthst i had thousands of roaches to feed off to my two dragons, although they lay eggs its not a bad thing all you do is leave them in side with the roaches and they will hatch by themselves if you loose on or two it wont be bad because you are going to have hundreds of the egg sacs. but its up to you, i still like dubias over the turks but to hold you off until the dubia colony takes off i thinks turks are good alternative.

 

[augsburg1530]

I raise dubia and lobsters. I like dubia best and second are lobsters, turks are just too fast for me to be comfortable with. I put a thin layer of vasaline around the top 3 inches of my tote and have never had a lobster escape on its own. They do breed really fast and are super easy to care for. You can get lobsters pretty cheap at http://www.aaronpauling.com

Hope that helps,

Eric

 

[patrickb]

That's two more people now that have order from thebugpros and had no die offs. Just my bad luck as usual! That's what so great about a place like this, people can compare experiences and get a more informed opinion.

 

[INCA]

i am thinking about lobsters. but aaron pauling is out of stock... where is a good place to buy em??

 

[pscaulkins]

I just ordered this morning from thebugpro's. I got 2000 turks but they only had smalls. Do they grow fast like lobsters? Hopefully I won't have any die offs. I ordered 100 lobsters from llreptile and they were supposed to be mixed. Well I only got about 4 adults and a tons of itty bitty ones. So much for using those as feeders right away. I used to have a huge colony of lobsters but when my two oldest dragons stopped eating them, I killed them off. I wasn't expecting to take on a baby again. She is 5 months old now and totally refuses crickets. She loves dubia's but my colony needs time to establish. She also eats hornworms, phoenix worms but she eats 100 at a time. So I will have three species of roaches and none are ready as a steady supply of feeders.

My male grew up on lobsters. I used a large plastic coffee cup and dumped the lobsters in and held the cup in Semi's tank and he ate them as fast as they came out. Lobsters are really soft bodied and Semi's breeder told me I could feed Semi lobsters larger then the space between his eyes. I did without any issues but I don't recommend it in case someone has issues.