mixed species feeder colony?

[dtknow]

I've been working on building a feeder colony and it has managed to accumulate several different species.

Blaptica dubia(most numerous)
Blaberus discoidalis
Blatta lateralis(will be the most heavily harvested, currently very few)
some kind of mealworm(Tenebrio obscurus?)

Can anyone predict what will happen? I'd imagine that left to its own devices one species would soon dominate since in captivity there can be no resource partitioning. I'm hoping though that at least 2 species will remain in high numbers if appropriate harvesting is done.

 

[REAL]

I've been working on building a feeder colony and it has managed to accumulate several different species.

Blaptica dubia(most numerous)
Blaberus discoidalis
Blatta lateralis(will be the most heavily harvested, currently very few)
some kind of mealworm(Tenebrio obscurus?)

Can anyone predict what will happen? I'd imagine that left to its own devices one species would soon dominate since in captivity there can be no resource partitioning. I'm hoping though that at least 2 species will remain in high numbers if appropriate harvesting is done.

This is my prediction even though I've never kept more than 1 species together in one place (bug-wise). I am, however, currently keeping discoidis and dubias together, two different roach species.

My predictions: You'll have a hard time controlling and balancing the numbers between the species, especially without regular if not constant monitoring. One or two of those species will probably end up dominating the tank by sucking up its resources the fastest or enough to disable/cripple the others. I would have to say lateralis would probably be the victor, but thats rather a blunt guess and would be a bit hard to guess especially with my very limited experiences with roaches. I'm just guessing that because I think they will breed the fastest, while they require less food than the larger roaches due to size, this helps them even more.

It'll probably not work out or at least be a pain in the butt. But hey! You never know. I've kept shrimps with fish and snails and it creates a rather discomforting limitation. Lets say cherry shrimps and guppies. Guppies can't eat adult shrimps, but they can eat the babies, so while the guppy population blooms, the shrimps slowly die out. Shrimps have a higher sensitivity towards water chemistry. Conditions which a fish might find completely acceptable, may be completely unacceptable to shrimps.

How difficult it is to keep more than one species together varies, but it would require a lot of research if you want to be careful and you're truly serious.