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Awhile ago, I posted a How To thread on cleaning a roach enclosure. It's a good read, and I'd recommend reading it all the way through before continuing with this post...I will be referring to it because this is simply a modified version of that article.
It was a good general method for cleaning out a N. cinerea or lobster roach colony, but one of the criticisms of the article (a valid one, I might add) is that this method would not be effective for some of the more popular feeder species.
Lobster roaches are popular feeders. They breed very fast and the adults are less prone to burrowing than other popular feeders such as Blaberus and Blaptica species. The nymphs usually hang out on the surface of the substrate...rarely venturing below the first centimeter or so of substrate as far as I can tell.
Blaberus and Blaptica, by contrast, are large species that grow and breed very slowly when compared to lobster roaches. It took about 6 months for my lobster roach colony to grow to the point where I could reliably use them as feeders. It took about a year for my Blaberus and Blaptica to do the same (although, I will point out that I started with about 200 adult lobsters and with this colony, I started out with about a quarter of that).
When you take the substrate out of a lobster roach colony, you aren't really losing much. Much of what you do lose, you can easily replace using the method described in the article I hyperlinked to.
However, since Blaptica and Blaberus species are much more prone to burrowing, this method will be less effective. Also, since most of the nymphs more prone to burrowing and less prone to climbing you will lose a significant amount of nymphs if you completely discard all the substrate as I do with lobster roaches.
Furthermore, one needs to take into account why the tank needs cleaning. There are two reasons.
First, death. Death is a part of a roach colony...and I'm not just talking about the ones that are eaten. When one cares for a large amount of animals, you will experience many deaths. Some get diseased, like the individual discussed in the following paragraphs, some have moulting problems, and some just die for idiopathic reasons.
However, if you practice good husbandry, the roaches breed much faster than they die. This is good because you get feeders, but it also contributes to the unavoidable background death rate. A small percentage of roaches will die unavoidably, but a small percentage for a large number of roaches is vastly larger than a small percentage of a small number of roaches.
The second reason you clean the substrate is for precautionary measures. A part of every house's microfauna are grain mites (think Vashta Nerada) and although they normally subsist in small numbers, under the right conditions they can explode.
If you want to see what this looks like, look at this post from when I was young and stupid.
In a one sentence summary without pop-culture references nobody will get, you want to keep up on maintenance to prevent your room from smelling like crap and to keep microfauna in check. Simple as that.
After removing all furnishings and detaching the roaches (again, I refer you to the original article), give each and every piece of furnishing a good sniff. Discard anything which smells particularly bad. You want to do this while you still have your sense of smell...no matter what type of protection (discussed later) you wear, you will lose your sense of smell for about half the day or so.
The first thing you're going to want to do is to spot-clean, begin by looking for diseased roaches (usually moving sluggishly on the top of the substrate) and invaders while you pick out the deaders.
I'm going to go off on a seemingly random tangent (which is why this is highlighted in green) and discuss disease in the role of roach colonies. This individual is suffering from something which is deemed 'the black death'. It causes roaches to turn a red color, become black, smell very bad and then die.
If you see any roaches with these characteristics or which otherwise look unhealthy, discard them along with the dead specimens.
Roach diseases aren't well studied, and for me this comes and goes and is never a major issue. This was the only roach in my colony which was suffering from this disease.
For more info on roach diseases, go here
The second reason I bring this up is because of invaders.
If you raise lobster roaches, you will find them in your other colonies from time to time. This is unavoidable. However, they are a bit of a pest species because they do not 'play well' with others. Due to their comparably fast reproductive rate and incredibly voracious feeding manner, it's possible for them to take over your colony by out-competing your other roaches.
Deal with them accordingly.
Do not transfer them back to their 'home colony' because they very well could be carrying some sort of pathogen which could then be transferred to your other colony. You want to avoid any possible cross-contamination. This is also why you don't transfer uneaten feeders back to your colony.
This is why I personally recommend keeping at least two species of feeders...you can't confuse them and it's just safer. Besides, every species has it's trade-offs. This helps to balance your feeders.
Now...this cage was cleaned outside. If you do this, keep an eye out for Tachnid flies and never turn your back. They're attracted by the smell of the roach frass and they're endoparasitoids. You don't want them laying eggs on your roaches while you're not looking.
I'm not 100% sure if they would or not...but it's just a good idea to keep tabs on them if you do any sort of roach maintenance outside. I had about half a dozen or so venture into my garage while I was cleaning the colony.
Okay...back to the subject at hand.
Dead roaches. Pick them up as you see them while cleaning the colony out. They don't seem to crawl somewhere and die like dogs tend to do.
This is what the colony should look like when you're done removing the furnishings.
And start picking them out.
One of the things you're going to notice is that the nymphs like to dine on the dead adults. I use 19% protein dogfood and as you can see from this string of pictures, it's quite common. Nothing to worry about because it's completely normal.
Rather gruesome game of peek-and-boo:
You might even find your roaches have a sick sense of humor, like in the picture above. Actually, that's anthromorphization...roaches don't think things are funny. But I think the picture above is interesting for whatever reason.
Again...another random tangent, but this one is actually pertinent to the subject at hand. Just pick the deaders up and put them in a bag. There will be nymphs inside a few of them. Don't pick apart each and every one to 'rescue' the nymphs because that will take a very, very long time and turn something which should take two hours max into a day-long ordeal.
Here's what it should look like when you're done:
About half a Wal*Mart bag full of roaches that I intend to use as fertilizer:
Here's the part that sucks. And by sucks I mean:
If you think I look miserable in that picture, I am. This is the worst part of cleaning a roach colony...and you will need protective gear because roach frass contains a chemical called chitin.
Chitin is found in the cell walls of fungi and thus the immune system responds quite well to this particular chemical. Dust mites and mould spores are both chitin covered...so if you're allergic to dust mites or mould, it's an especially good idea to wear a mask when doing maintenance. Roach colonies also seem to sensitize people over time, so wearing a mask during maintenance is definitely not a bad idea.
And here's why: Because you will inhale dust.
Anyways...we'll get back to this later.
Before the next part, you need to remove about a quarter of the substrate. This will keep the substrate from getting too deep and building up moisture. Moisture leads to grain mite infestation. Moisture in the substrate is bad.
This also helps to remove loose food particles in the soil...another thing which will help contribute to grain mites. Undigested grains tend to help them get established much easier in my experience.
Sort through the separated substrate to remove any roaches over an inch long. You want to rescue bugs which are closest to reproductive age to help the colony rebound.
You don't want to spend your time rescuing nymphs you can barely see. It's impractical and your colony will eventually rebound to it's former numbers without your help. To try to rescue all the nymphs in your colony whenever you clean would simply be impractical because of logistics. Many will die. I try to remove a quarter of the substrate so only about 25-50% of the nymphs in the colony will die, based on the area of the colony and assuming everyone's equally distributed.
If you save the adults, this will make the colony rebound faster. This is less important for lobster roaches due to their small size and quicker reproductive rates.
The second reason I only remove part of the substrate is because I've determined that substrate is essential for a healthy Blaberus or Blaptica colony and breeding will slow down significantly without it.
Lobsters don't seem to care one way or the other.
After you're done with this, seal the bag and toss it in the freezer to kill the remaining nymphs. Proper disposal of un-needed feeders is a part of good husbandry. If you want to make some money, you can also sell the discarded substrate as it will make the perfect starter colony for your fellow arachnid keepers.
Under no circumstances should you ever dump substrate containing live animals outside. Ever.
Another good idea is to learn to differentiate between corpses hollowed out by nymphs and shedskins.
Insects shed parts of their trachea...and this is what those white things pointing towards my wrist are in this picture.
They look like antennae, but they're not. Shedskins are also thinner and weaker than hollowed out corpses. Think crispy VS crunchy.
I don't care about the shedskins, but I do care about the corpses. Get as many of those as you can.
Sift until you're certian that no more corpses (or diseased specimens) are present.
This should be the end result:
Half a Wal*Mart bag full of dead roaches:
Pretty impressive, eh?
The bag on the left is the substrate.
Then, replace the furnishings and place everything else in the freezer:
And you're done.
This should work for people with larger colonies, as well. If you have a larger colony, remove a larger percentage of the substrate to save time if you wish but remember to remove the deaders and foul-smelling furnishings.
It was a good general method for cleaning out a N. cinerea or lobster roach colony, but one of the criticisms of the article (a valid one, I might add) is that this method would not be effective for some of the more popular feeder species.
Lobster roaches are popular feeders. They breed very fast and the adults are less prone to burrowing than other popular feeders such as Blaberus and Blaptica species. The nymphs usually hang out on the surface of the substrate...rarely venturing below the first centimeter or so of substrate as far as I can tell.
Blaberus and Blaptica, by contrast, are large species that grow and breed very slowly when compared to lobster roaches. It took about 6 months for my lobster roach colony to grow to the point where I could reliably use them as feeders. It took about a year for my Blaberus and Blaptica to do the same (although, I will point out that I started with about 200 adult lobsters and with this colony, I started out with about a quarter of that).
When you take the substrate out of a lobster roach colony, you aren't really losing much. Much of what you do lose, you can easily replace using the method described in the article I hyperlinked to.
However, since Blaptica and Blaberus species are much more prone to burrowing, this method will be less effective. Also, since most of the nymphs more prone to burrowing and less prone to climbing you will lose a significant amount of nymphs if you completely discard all the substrate as I do with lobster roaches.
Furthermore, one needs to take into account why the tank needs cleaning. There are two reasons.
First, death. Death is a part of a roach colony...and I'm not just talking about the ones that are eaten. When one cares for a large amount of animals, you will experience many deaths. Some get diseased, like the individual discussed in the following paragraphs, some have moulting problems, and some just die for idiopathic reasons.
However, if you practice good husbandry, the roaches breed much faster than they die. This is good because you get feeders, but it also contributes to the unavoidable background death rate. A small percentage of roaches will die unavoidably, but a small percentage for a large number of roaches is vastly larger than a small percentage of a small number of roaches.
The second reason you clean the substrate is for precautionary measures. A part of every house's microfauna are grain mites (think Vashta Nerada) and although they normally subsist in small numbers, under the right conditions they can explode.
If you want to see what this looks like, look at this post from when I was young and stupid.
In a one sentence summary without pop-culture references nobody will get, you want to keep up on maintenance to prevent your room from smelling like crap and to keep microfauna in check. Simple as that.
After removing all furnishings and detaching the roaches (again, I refer you to the original article), give each and every piece of furnishing a good sniff. Discard anything which smells particularly bad. You want to do this while you still have your sense of smell...no matter what type of protection (discussed later) you wear, you will lose your sense of smell for about half the day or so.
The first thing you're going to want to do is to spot-clean, begin by looking for diseased roaches (usually moving sluggishly on the top of the substrate) and invaders while you pick out the deaders.
I'm going to go off on a seemingly random tangent (which is why this is highlighted in green) and discuss disease in the role of roach colonies. This individual is suffering from something which is deemed 'the black death'. It causes roaches to turn a red color, become black, smell very bad and then die.
If you see any roaches with these characteristics or which otherwise look unhealthy, discard them along with the dead specimens.
Roach diseases aren't well studied, and for me this comes and goes and is never a major issue. This was the only roach in my colony which was suffering from this disease.
For more info on roach diseases, go here
The second reason I bring this up is because of invaders.
If you raise lobster roaches, you will find them in your other colonies from time to time. This is unavoidable. However, they are a bit of a pest species because they do not 'play well' with others. Due to their comparably fast reproductive rate and incredibly voracious feeding manner, it's possible for them to take over your colony by out-competing your other roaches.
Deal with them accordingly.
Do not transfer them back to their 'home colony' because they very well could be carrying some sort of pathogen which could then be transferred to your other colony. You want to avoid any possible cross-contamination. This is also why you don't transfer uneaten feeders back to your colony.
This is why I personally recommend keeping at least two species of feeders...you can't confuse them and it's just safer. Besides, every species has it's trade-offs. This helps to balance your feeders.
Now...this cage was cleaned outside. If you do this, keep an eye out for Tachnid flies and never turn your back. They're attracted by the smell of the roach frass and they're endoparasitoids. You don't want them laying eggs on your roaches while you're not looking.
I'm not 100% sure if they would or not...but it's just a good idea to keep tabs on them if you do any sort of roach maintenance outside. I had about half a dozen or so venture into my garage while I was cleaning the colony.
Okay...back to the subject at hand.
Dead roaches. Pick them up as you see them while cleaning the colony out. They don't seem to crawl somewhere and die like dogs tend to do.
This is what the colony should look like when you're done removing the furnishings.
And start picking them out.
One of the things you're going to notice is that the nymphs like to dine on the dead adults. I use 19% protein dogfood and as you can see from this string of pictures, it's quite common. Nothing to worry about because it's completely normal.
Rather gruesome game of peek-and-boo:
You might even find your roaches have a sick sense of humor, like in the picture above. Actually, that's anthromorphization...roaches don't think things are funny. But I think the picture above is interesting for whatever reason.
Again...another random tangent, but this one is actually pertinent to the subject at hand. Just pick the deaders up and put them in a bag. There will be nymphs inside a few of them. Don't pick apart each and every one to 'rescue' the nymphs because that will take a very, very long time and turn something which should take two hours max into a day-long ordeal.
Here's what it should look like when you're done:
About half a Wal*Mart bag full of roaches that I intend to use as fertilizer:
Here's the part that sucks. And by sucks I mean:
If you think I look miserable in that picture, I am. This is the worst part of cleaning a roach colony...and you will need protective gear because roach frass contains a chemical called chitin.
Chitin is found in the cell walls of fungi and thus the immune system responds quite well to this particular chemical. Dust mites and mould spores are both chitin covered...so if you're allergic to dust mites or mould, it's an especially good idea to wear a mask when doing maintenance. Roach colonies also seem to sensitize people over time, so wearing a mask during maintenance is definitely not a bad idea.
And here's why: Because you will inhale dust.
Anyways...we'll get back to this later.
Before the next part, you need to remove about a quarter of the substrate. This will keep the substrate from getting too deep and building up moisture. Moisture leads to grain mite infestation. Moisture in the substrate is bad.
This also helps to remove loose food particles in the soil...another thing which will help contribute to grain mites. Undigested grains tend to help them get established much easier in my experience.
Sort through the separated substrate to remove any roaches over an inch long. You want to rescue bugs which are closest to reproductive age to help the colony rebound.
You don't want to spend your time rescuing nymphs you can barely see. It's impractical and your colony will eventually rebound to it's former numbers without your help. To try to rescue all the nymphs in your colony whenever you clean would simply be impractical because of logistics. Many will die. I try to remove a quarter of the substrate so only about 25-50% of the nymphs in the colony will die, based on the area of the colony and assuming everyone's equally distributed.
If you save the adults, this will make the colony rebound faster. This is less important for lobster roaches due to their small size and quicker reproductive rates.
The second reason I only remove part of the substrate is because I've determined that substrate is essential for a healthy Blaberus or Blaptica colony and breeding will slow down significantly without it.
Lobsters don't seem to care one way or the other.
After you're done with this, seal the bag and toss it in the freezer to kill the remaining nymphs. Proper disposal of un-needed feeders is a part of good husbandry. If you want to make some money, you can also sell the discarded substrate as it will make the perfect starter colony for your fellow arachnid keepers.
Under no circumstances should you ever dump substrate containing live animals outside. Ever.
Another good idea is to learn to differentiate between corpses hollowed out by nymphs and shedskins.
Insects shed parts of their trachea...and this is what those white things pointing towards my wrist are in this picture.
They look like antennae, but they're not. Shedskins are also thinner and weaker than hollowed out corpses. Think crispy VS crunchy.
I don't care about the shedskins, but I do care about the corpses. Get as many of those as you can.
Sift until you're certian that no more corpses (or diseased specimens) are present.
This should be the end result:
Half a Wal*Mart bag full of dead roaches:
Pretty impressive, eh?
The bag on the left is the substrate.
Then, replace the furnishings and place everything else in the freezer:
And you're done.
This should work for people with larger colonies, as well. If you have a larger colony, remove a larger percentage of the substrate to save time if you wish but remember to remove the deaders and foul-smelling furnishings.
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