Feeder Roaches - Your Choice?!

[pinkfoot]

I'm leaning towards feeding my tarantulas roaches instead of crickets in future.

I need to know from anyone who has tried this if it's a good idea, and also which species you'd recommend, and why?

Cheers!

 

[Pyst]

I use B.dubia. Crickets are smelly and vile. Although it can take several months for a B.dubia colony to get established it's well worth the wait. They don't fly,even though the males may flutter. Can't climb smooth surfaces such as plastic or glass. And most important, in my book, is they don't smell bad. Also they are very meaty as adults. Hope this helps. There are several threads about them if you want to read more. Hope this helps in your decision.

-Mike

 

[Stickytoe]

I prefer B. dubias for adult T's and my geckos also. For spiderlings I am finding B. lateralis to be superior, since they are more active, and also they do not burrow in the substrate.

 

[Takumaku]

I really like working with B. fumigatas (cuban burrowing roach) right now. Very easy to sex (size and color dimorphic, males 1-1.5", females 2+").

 

[IguanaMama]

I find it is a good idea to use more than one type of roach. Roaches are so nice anyway, once you start keeping them, you might enjoy them as much as the spiders, I do. I currently have close to two dozen species of roaches, but the ones I use as feeders are orange heads, dubias and Blatta (Shelfordella) lateralis. Orange heads are only practical if you have big spiders with big appetites. Full grown lateralis are the closest in size to crickets. To me, they are just much nicer than crickets, it actually pains me to feed them off.

 

[Vys]

For smaller/ medium sized arboreals and terrestrial and burrowing juveniles, I really like P.nivea. Boluses are easy to spot on a dark substrate, and once you get the colony going it's more action-filled than a colony of any other roach I've seen. (Faster in metabolism, faster in movement). They devour fruit and vegetables like...I was going to say 'crickets', but they don't leave visible piles of poo everywhere, so superworms is a closer call, and superworms devour things like sharks

It is of course annoying when they flutter around your face and fly away when you keep their container open for too long, but they don't usually live long outside of it either, in my experience. At least in Sweden. Here in Ireland they do (1 month+), but that may be because the ambient relative humidity is like the Amazon Forest's.

 

[Spider Tyrant]

G. Portentosa is the way I go. I have a nice little colony of them, and my tarantulas love them.

I would get others, but I dont feel like having a live animal shipped out into the desert and all I can buy here are hissers.

 

[cacoseraph]

my roach thoughts:
http://venomlist.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=7689

 

[Texas Blonde]

I have three large colonies for feeding: Blaberus discoidalis, Eublaberus prosticus, and Byrsotria fumigata. All three work great, and breed fairly fast.

The E prosticus is my favorite for feeding larger Ts, and adults. The nymphs are very fat and large. The B fumigatas have tiny nymphs, which is great for slings. The discoids are a great in-between.

 

[TheDarkFinder]

Who voted that they will stay with crickets and why?

 

[Stylopidae]

I'm going to be using lobster roaches pretty soon.

I've heard from a handful of people that B. dubia does not work well at all for arboreals.

Since I'm mostly into centipedes right now, I guess I don't have to worry about that.

Lobsters are the cheapest feeder, though.

I'll definitely be picking up more colonies as time goes on and my collection grows.

Does anyone notice if thier spiders prefer one species of roach over another?

 

[NrthCstInverts]

i use lobsters for just about everything. they are great for for arboreals of a resonable size, and for slings as well. i also maintain lateralis, hissers, discoidales, and a few other species so i can change it up once in a while.

With the scorps however, i dont use the baby lobsters as much. More Lateralis, other species nymphs, and yes occasionally the dreaded cricket.... (only when im feeling REAL lazy).

 

[Spike]

Who voted that they will stay with crickets and why?

I did I originally get them to get over my initial fear of them and use them as feeders for my T's . Now that I have had them for a while and watched them grow a bit, I can't seem to bring myslelf to feeding them to anything:8o So they became my pets and I let the evil crick's do the sacraficing :evil: :} . They very interesting and misunderstood bugs IMO.

 

[pinkfoot]

Heh, heh!!

Interesting info coming out...

42 votes and B. dubia is at 47%, which is awesome! Sadly, there are none available in South Africa, and the only species I can find thus far (but don't worry - I'll find the others!!) is G. Portentosa. Now Beardo, you find these smelly, which is curious, as I didn't realise any of them smelled.

 

[Michael Jacobi]

Blaberus hybrids or Blaptica dubia as primary and Blatta lateralis as secondary for small specimens.

Cheers, Michael

 

[IguanaMama]

Plenty of roaches are smelly, there are species that are known to put out a defensive odor, but I do not believe that hissers are one of them. I think if your husbandry is correct for them, than there should be no odor. However, I am with Spike on this one, the more I am around roaches, the harder it is to feed them to my other animals. I started to get that way with mice too, as my snakes got bigger and I had to feed them full grown mice instead of pinkies. Just have to grin and bare it. Hissers are particularly charming, however, I must warn you. You might have a hard time using them as feeders, a lot of people keep them as pets. What about Giant Lobsters--Henschoutedenia flexivitta, they are really good feeders.

 

[Stylopidae]

Just got my culture of lobsters (200 or so) today and am really eager for them to start breeding.

I'm using a 35 gallon tub (on clearance for $3 plus employee discount), so...yeah. I'll definitely have enough.

They do seem small, though. I'm concerned that when my G. aureostriata is full grown, it won't really notice them.

It always amazes me how expensive feeder roaches are, so I prefer to do this on the cheap.

Iggyma...do you have a link to the roaches you mentioned (preferably a sales link, as I can't seem to find them on blaberus.com).

 

[IguanaMama]

I get a lot of my roaches and millies from Richie "Roachman" Willis. He's the guy that co-wrote the Allpet roach book, an expert in the field and one of the nicest guys you'd ever meet. Lucky for me, he is local. His website is listed in the classifieds section under Roaches of the World -- http://www.angelfire.com/wy/roaches/ -- but I don't know how often he updates, so you are better off emailing him and asking him if he has what you want. He also has had a lot of other interesting things that we talked a little bit about at Arachnocon.

 

[OldHag]

I have 12 different types of roaches and my favorite is the B. dubia. They're fat, non-smelly, plump, juicy, and finger lick'n good!

 

[Scorpendra]

crickets may be loud, messy and smelly, but it's because of that you can't develop an affinity for them and enjoy seeing them get killed. i don't feed roaches to my Ts yet, but when i do, i guess B. dubia of whatever i can find nearby. i live in a bad spot for diverse inverts, pet or feeder.

is there any real distinction in terms of if they're not feders? like i know you wouldn't give a T an M. rhinocerous but it's pretty hazy beyond that.