roaches for sale

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Kfen
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Joined: June 17th, 2010, 5:51 am
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roaches for sale

Post by Kfen »

I'm not sure if we are allowed to post things for sale here or not, so please delete if not.

My dubia roach colony got way out of hand and I have a lot of extras. Make me an offer on any of the following:

400-500 1/2 -3/4"
800-900 3/4"- 1.5" most of which are on the larger size, some adults.

50+ breeder females that are about 11 months old. They will come with 20+ males, some of which are the same age and some of which are freshly molted adults.

Like I said, make me an offer and I will probably not say no, I wasn't trying to raise roaches for sale.
Thanks
Kevin
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Kelly Mc
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Re: roaches for sale

Post by Kelly Mc »

Kfen Im always interested in dubia as my personal home colony is modest and use supply i get from this other guy to sell to others as frozen.

But it probably more practical to sell to people closer to you.

Still I would like to have a roach friend to talk about raising roaches.

I havent stuck to any method yet and have experimented with different stuff. I would be interested in hearing your style of raising them and i dont recall a roach thread on here ever so i think its time.
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chris_mcmartin
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Re: roaches for sale

Post by chris_mcmartin »

I started a colony a little under two years ago after getting some from a friend. I plan on transferring a sizable portion of said colony to a friend halfway across the country (north-to-south, anyway) at Christmas time (since I'll be traveling there already). It took a couple of months initially for the colony to grow sufficiently to start feeding from it (I use the baby roaches for my banded geckos, and occasionally give adults to my box turtles), but they're about the easiest feeder insect to maintain I've ever heard of. If you would've told me two years ago I'd wind up raising roaches in my basement, I'd have thought you were crazy (and my wife would think so even more!).
Kfen
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Re: roaches for sale

Post by Kfen »

chris_mcmartin wrote: If you would've told me two years ago I'd wind up raising roaches in my basement, I'd have thought you were crazy (and my wife would think so even more!).
I agree with that! My wife doesn't even know I have them. She knows I have another "feeder insect", but she does not know that they are roaches. When she asked what they were, I said they are called dubias, and don't look in the container because you will freak out. I still don't really like touching the really big ones.

Kelly, and anyone else that is curious about my set up:

Its pretty simple. I started with 60 females and 20 males in an opaque plastic storage container that locks. (don't want those suckers getting out!) I drilled a bunch of small holes in the top for ventilation and put an undertank heater under it. There is a lot of cardboard egg crate in there for surface area. They are stacked vertically so all the feces drop to the bottom. For food I keep dry parrot pellets in there at all times, and feed fresh fruit and/or veggies 2-3 times a week. I used to keep water crystals in there, but realized I don't need them. They get enough moisture from the fruit/veggies and there is usually some condensation on at least one wall of the container. I clean it out every 2 months or so, but really its only to separate out the young, it could go much longer- these things don't smell.

The young I move to a rack system for easier access for feeding. They just have one layer of egg crate, and are fed the same as adults. They also do not get water crystals, and I don't see any condensation so the fresh food seems to provide enough moisture.

I started this back in February of this year. I started feeding 2-4 dozen roaches a week out of this colony in April or May. I have given away or sold an additional 1000 and currently have another 12-1400 to get rid of, which does not include newly hatched ones. (I realize that people say live birth, but really the females just hold on to the egg cases). Its amazing how easy and prolific they are.

To separate the sizes and the feces, I use a stack of 5 gallon buckets. The top bucket has 1/2" holes drilled in the bottom. Each bucket beneath has progressively smaller holes until the final bucket, which is intact. The top bucket separates out all the adult females and most of the adult males. The adult males that get through are easy enough to pick out of the next bucket.

A warning: Before I started on this roach journey, I had read in many places that they NEED a very warm and humid environment to live. They wont live in the average persons house. I found this not to be true. While they may not breed in low temps, they can certainly survive. I kept a lizard outside this summer and fed it roaches. The lizard came back in sometime in August, but I did not go through its outdoor enclosure until late September. Here in CT we had experienced night time temps in the 40's and some days had not gotten out of the 50's. I found a few roaches that were alive and well. I also have some in my garage currently that is in the 50's that seem to be doing just fine. I have not experimented with low temps AND low humidity, but I make every effort to not let any get loose inside my house.
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Kelly Mc
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Re: roaches for sale

Post by Kelly Mc »

Wow Kfen it sounds like you have an awesome system. Its good you posted it. Haha its no surprise your production is so high and I wish you were closer for sure! Who knows in future maybe we could work something out in shipping them.

Chris, Kfen - Yes. Never use the R word. That is Key. Always just say Dubia, or Feeder Insect. I have habituated Renee the same way. She know knows they are roaches though but that they are more dum dee dum dee doo than the other kinds and she likes them now and buys them produce treats.

I have found too that they will survive where its cold and resource scarce as some stragglers were in a container in the garage i used when i was seperating to clean and it had been months. I felt a distinct pang of guilt at my oversight. They are so inherently cooperative and pleasant to culture. I want to be a kind farmer to them.

My home colony production is kind of slowing down - I do not have use for the large females as food with my guys at home, they all eat juves and subs to modest sz adults so i wonder if the females wane reproductively with age as ive had some of these Berthas for a few years now. They probably live a very long time. I end up culling out all the younger ladies to feed out. Maybe thats it.
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gbin
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Re: roaches for sale

Post by gbin »

Do Dubia not smell as other roaches do? I've encountered numerous roach species over the years, in the wild and in captivity, and to my nose they all have more or less the same awful stink (which would certainly keep me from being fooled about what my wife was keeping ;) ). Cricket species bother me too, but not nearly as much. But maybe I'm just particularly sensitive to these creatures' odor (whereas I can't even smell some things that bother my wife considerably - go figure!)...

Gerry
Kfen
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Re: roaches for sale

Post by Kfen »

The general consensus is that dubia roaches do not smell. I definitely agree. I have never kept any other species of roach so I cannot compare, however, I can't stand the smell of crickets.
Kelly Mc wrote: Haha its no surprise your production is so high and I wish you were closer for sure!
I actually think I could get more production out of them if I kept them warmer than I do. But I certainly don't need any more!
dbh
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Re: roaches for sale

Post by dbh »

Chris,

Try bean beetles for your Coleonyx.
Doesn't get much easier than that, although they do fly but not bad.

David
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chris_mcmartin
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Re: roaches for sale

Post by chris_mcmartin »

dbh wrote:Chris,

Try bean beetles for your Coleonyx.
Doesn't get much easier than that, although they do fly but not bad.
I might need to look into those for a little variety, but to date the dubia seem to be working very well!

When I first got the dubia, I also received some "red runners" (Turkistan roaches, Blatta lateralis). Rather than giving live birth they produce egg cases as the standard cockroaches do, plus they are capable of flying fairly well, climb better, and move faster--therefore making them less appealing as feeders (for my purposes, anyway). The last straw was my wife and kid finding a male in our living room (the roaches are maintained in the basement) which then flew off the wall at them. There were a few stragglers remaining in with the dubia colony but I think I eventually tracked them all down and fed them off.

I keep my dubia in a large Rubbermaid/Sterilite tub with no lid, but a band of smooth, clear packing tape near the inside upper rim, and this is coated with petroleum jelly. The roaches do not seem to cross it (heck, they don't appear capable of climbing the smooth walls of the container either, but the jelly-band provides added insurance against escapes). I have a dome fixture with a ceramic heat emitter over one end and the roaches tend to congregate near it. I use cardboard egg cartons, cut in half but still "closed," stood on their open end (where they were cut), as hiding places for the roaches. They get fed a variety of table scraps (fruits, vegetables, and breads) as well as Repashy Bug Burger (the crickets I used to keep didn't seem to like it, but the roaches eat it up; plus it provides moisture such that I don't have to supplement with polymer crystals etc.).

To feed them to my geckos, I harvest them as follows: I bought a couple of cheap plastic buckets (suitable for beach use, but wider at the bottom than the standard "sand-castle-building" variety) and cut most of the bottom out of one of them, being careful to leave a lip/rim around the bottom edge. I then cut a circle out of 1/2-inch-mesh hardware cloth to fit the bottom of this bucket. This becomes my "roach sifter." When it's time to harvest some roaches, I nest the "roach sifter" inside another bucket (with its bottom intact) but hold them such that there's space between the bottom of the sifter and the bottom of the "catch" bucket. I take one of the egg-carton halves from the roach tub and vigorously shake it into the "sifter." The adult roaches largely remain in the sifter, with the younger ones falling through (newborns up to about 5/8" long). Some of the adults manage to wedge through the mesh (or under it, since I don't permanently attach it to the bottom of the bucket) but they are few in number and I can easily remove them individually to place back in the main roach tub.

I don't mind handling the younger roaches, but like others have said, I'm a little creeped out by the adults. To handle them, I generally pin them to the bottom/side of the bucket, then slide them up to the rim, at which point I grasp them by either side of the "shield" at the front of the thorax. This has the added benefit of seeming to cause them to quit moving their legs around which helps reduce the "creepiness" factor. I picture the babies more like "roly polies" and this has helped convinced my kid to take on the gecko-feeding duties (provided I sift out the adults first).

The biggest drawback with feeding my lizards these roaches is that the roaches tend to want to hide quickly if they're not eaten immediately. Sometimes I find them under paper towels (my substrate for my geckos), under rocks/hides, etc. We try to only feed what we can observe them eat real-time, sort of like feeding tropical fish.

As far as low-temperature tolerance, I was surprised to discover roaches still alive after one of the tubs I used (and was in the process of cleaning out the frass/detritus) was left outside overnight in temperatures below freezing. They were hidden among the frass so that may have helped their survival. That being said, I have had one or two roaches get loose in the basement which is generally in the high 60s/low 70s ambient temps, and the roaches behave as it was presented to me when I started my colony: they moved to a corner of the room and just sat there. I generally turn off the heat emitter for a couple of months over the winter, since I cool all my animals during that time frame and I don't want the roaches reproducing as quickly. I haven't done so yet this season as I'm planning on giving some of my colony to a friend when I travel over Christmas.
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gbin
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Re: roaches for sale

Post by gbin »

chris_mcmartin wrote:... The last straw was my wife and kid finding a male in our living room (the roaches are maintained in the basement) which then flew off the wall at them...
That would do it for me, too! :lol:

(Yes, it's true, I'm a wildlife biologist who has spent considerable time afield - but finding a roach climbing the wall of my living room and then having it fly at me would creep me out something fierce. I never liked plucking them out out of my leaf litter samples, either, but somehow that was much more tolerable.)

Gerry
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chris_mcmartin
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Re: roaches for sale

Post by chris_mcmartin »

gbin wrote:
chris_mcmartin wrote:... The last straw was my wife and kid finding a male in our living room (the roaches are maintained in the basement) which then flew off the wall at them...
That would do it for me, too! :lol:
My family has lived with me lo these many years; they have pretty much come to accept periodic odd happenings such as this (but it did herald the end of the Turkistan-roach-breeding endeavor). My bigger concern is that I currently live in a duplex with likely easy access through the shared wall for a small invertebrate...no complaints from the neighbors (yet)... :|
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Joseph S.
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Re: roaches for sale

Post by Joseph S. »

Haha I remember getting a few hundred Turkistans to feed some red eye treefrogs. I managed to knock over the container($$$ scattering all over the floor!) and dozens must have went and hid in the house. We would find males for probably a year after that!

dubia definitely smell less than a few other species I've worked with. The dwarf hissers are also relatively clean. But yes, some others do have a distinct smell to them. dubia I find will survive down into the 50's no problem. But for breeding it probably needs to be in the low 70's at least.

I used to have a colony of lobster roaches that I sold before leaving for college. My poor mom was finding them for years afterward in all sizes!(I think it took about 4 years for them to stop appearing) She keeps the house pretty darn clean and is stingy on the heating so theses critters surviving means that claims of how delicate they are is overexaggerated. It sure helps that they bear live young unlike the standard pest species. Apparently they bought a new fridge and were totally embarrassed when the guys moved the old one and uncovered bunches of dead roaches. :cry: Not sure what factor keeps them from spreading out from FL.

I don't understand why more people don't do bean beetles. They are
-pretty darn clean for the amount of feeders you get!
-will not infest anything except for a few kinds of dried beans
-live for only a week as adults so any escapees are not around for too long to annoy people
-great food for baby reptiles...I think people who buys scores of small crickets should switch and say oodles of money.
-extremely low maintenance
Disadvantages
-when you first start with them they tend to be boom/bust...lots of beetles and then nothing in the cultures. You can help with this by mixing different kinds of beans(since they mature at different speeds on different species of suitable host beans), or keeping different cultures at different temperatures so you get staggered emergence
-they are great escape artists and have an incredible motivation to disperse. I've never seen them fly(crowding promotes a different phenotype that is supposed to be able to), but they will happily appear down the hall from where you fed them. Luckily they don't live long. Also make sure you store your blackeye peas you use for the cultures in airtight containers lest they turn into cultures before you want them too!
-use em or lose em since the adults last for a week or so. I tried putting them in the fridge but this did not seem to increase longevity much. When you get cultures going you will probably end up freezing/flushing thousands of the little buggers.

I keep them in canning jars with either fine mesh or screwed down over a coffee filter. I have another canning jar lid with a circle of plastic canvas cut to fit it. When a culture booms simply move this lid over to it and shake vigorously. You get a mixture of live and dead beetles, bean dust, and other debris small enough to go through the holes. The beans stay in the container. This is nice because if excess dust builds up in the cultures the beans can start to clump and mold if things get too humid. You can get about 3 generations on one batch of beans-at this point the beans are riddled with holes and have little substance to them...they also start getting a little funky smelling-but very dirty bean beetle cultures are about the equivalent of clean cricket cultures. To start new cultures simply add some adults to fresh beans and leave them for a few days until you notice eggs on the beans. Then you can feed the adults off or whatever.
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Kelly Mc
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Re: roaches for sale

Post by Kelly Mc »

I use mostly thawed roaches for feeding, all of the lizards I have fed dubia to in the past few years will take them, it just takes some location/spot habituation at first, and having no arolium really aids again in being a desirable feature of dubias for this. A few live among some ruptured thawed, in a low crock in easy view from a favored basking area.

Even smaller lizards can recognize non moving roaches I have found - I have raised cb leiocephalus on juvie thawed dubia, and I wonder if that would be a good tactic with the Bean Beetles to exploit the time frame Joseph mentioned and moot tendency to disperse.

Dubia have a duck and disappear disavantage.

I have found it very interesting how many lizard and gecko species will recognize and eat non moving insects, when habituated to an iconry of presentation.

It makes for very convenient management of feeding, and with crickets provides some protection from pathogen transmission.


edit to add that.
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Kelly Mc
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Re: roaches for sale

Post by Kelly Mc »

By convenient I mean that your choices of substrates, mosses, etc arent dictated or influenced by the feeding event.

The lizards approach...focus....strike - same as with live. Omnivores snap them up more casually, but obligate insectivores always focus very strongly with the same intensity they track a moving insect, and strike. Perhaps more.

I like being able to stock up specific sizes.

Its great to raise own dubia, period. Its great to know one's food supply is completely independent of industry supply, problems etc.

They are a good bug.
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