Experienced Roachkeepers: How long do you figure a colony can go w/o water?

[Code Monkey]

Not sure if I brought these home from work or if it's just coincidence, but I just discovered a massive mite explosion in my B. dubia colony (we had an outbreak in some of the German cockroach bins that had gotten flooded two weeks ago).

I've got my B. dubia bin open now and was planning on removing all moisture containing foods and the water gel tomorrow after I'm sure everyone is as hydrated as they want to get tonight. Any experienced keepers (Wade et al) have a good guestimate on how long I can keep them bone dry before I run into problems?

 

[MrDeranged]

Go in on some Hypoapsis mites with someone. If it's as massive as you're saying, you may need to do something a little quicker than waiting for die off from dessication.

Other than that, I have no idea how long a colony can go without water as I don't keep roaches

Scott

 

[Phillip]

I suppose it depends on the species of roach...

I have let lobsters get very dry before with no ill effects for nearly a month. Now this isn't to say they got no water but they did not get much at all. I have no idea how this would effect some other species however so you may have to play it by ear. Or drop ol Roachman an e-mail as I'm sure he would be happy to tell ya.

Phil

 

[Jesse607]

I am not sure about B. dubia specifically, but in general most species can go about 3 weeks before older adults start dying, and cannibalization of molting and weak individuals becomes a problem.

I think the longer a species of roach lifecycle is, and/or the longer the adult stage lasts, the more adept they are to "lean" times. Of course every species is different.

I have had individual and small groups of hissers, B. discoidales, and B. gigantea last over 50 days with minimal/no water and no food. I have had lobsters and P. americana last almost a month in such conditions, and the lobsters still gave birth.

Hope that helps a little.

Mites are annoying.

 

[Buspirone]

I'm interested in this too. I've been dealing with the same problem. I've gotten the population down but they are still present. I started off moving all the substrate to one end of the enclosure and sifting through it to remove all foodstuff that the nymphs had drug down into the substrate. I scooped out quite a few massive hordes of mites on food items. Then for several days I had a heat lamp right over top of the substrate pile down close to dry it out, stirring it up every couple hours . I had a heat gradient of well over a 100F under the lamp at one end of the enclosure and about 90 at the end where all the roaches had congregated. I could only bring myself to hold back water and fresh food for a week before I started offering it again but the enclosure itself was bone dry by the second day. I still see a few mites in the fresh food dish(I count maybe 10-20 on the inside of the dish walls each time I empty it) and I changed the water dish from a shallow drainage dish for a flower pot to a mini-gravity feed water dish for small reptiles with stones in it. I have alot less spillage now so the enclosure stays alot drier overall.

 

[Wade]

IME the colony can live through long periods of dryness. When I clean a colony, I usually just start with a clean bin and transfer as many roaches over as I can, just lifting out the sections of eggcrating and moving them to the new bin. The substrate in the old bin is a mass of peat, roach molts and dried dead roaches, all stiched together by the silk of the damned Indian meal moths that infest my animal room. This still harbors lots of nyphs and some adults, so my practice is to harvest these as feeders first, rather than truing to sort through the mess to transfer each roach. I've discovered that these bins will continue to yield nymphs and adults literally months and months after I've removed the food and water sources in a state of total (apparent) dryness. The ambiant humidity in my animal room tends to be on the high side, however, and that may contribute to this.

That said, think I'd go with Scott's suggestion. I used Hypoaspis sp. mites once to get rid of a mite infestation in my hisser bin and it worked perfectly. I get them from www.biconet.com. Whatever you don't use in the roach bin can be used to proctively treat any moist tarantula, centipede or other invert cage (I know you don't keep scorpions ).

Wade

 

[Code Monkey]

What I need to do now is convince my boss we need to place a massive order for hypoaspis mites to control the problem in the lab (and since I would just keep recontaminating the lab, my home .

Thanks Wade, Jezzy, and Phillip for the reassurance it can go without water for a prolonged period. I had assumed I could get a couple of weeks but it's good to know I should be able to go a month or more.