Prolific Lobster Roaches

[Gail]

I got a starter colony from Kelly last fall and it has reached critical mass It is just unbelievable how fast these things reproduce once the colony is established! I just can't feed them off fast enough - a conservative estimate is that there are at least several thousand in there at this point - the tote weighs about 8 or 10 pounds with all of them in there! When I feed them it's like a shark feeding frenzy - I have a feeding "platform" on top of the "hive" where I pour the cat food and lay down the lettuce, apples, blueberries and bananas - within just a few moments of putting the food in it is swarming with so many roaches you can't see it. I mistakenly reached down the one side of the hive last week and in seconds my arm was covered with roaches bent on escape quite unnerving actually LOL.
Anyone else have this kind of population problem?

Gail

 

[danread]

Wow, mine colony hasn't reached that sort of stage yet. I've got the first new batch off offspring about to become adults, so i expect once these start to breed, the population should explode. What are you rearing them in?
It's a real shame they are climbers, i'd much prefer to ahve a colony of non-climbing roaches, but its a hell of a wait to get the colony up to a decent size.

Cheers,

 

[ghost_tomb]

@Gail

Buy a cane toad, I guarantee that one of them will take care of your excess population


what are you feeding them to anyway?

 

[Gail]

I've got them in a tall (26 gallon I think) clear storage bin from wall mart. I made an upright "radiator" style "hive" for them with the feeding platform on top of that. At first they seemed a little "slow" but once they reached a certain number it was like KER BANG!!!! Critical mass has been reached LOL.
I am only feeding them to my tarantulas and occassionally throw one to the rats which is why the population is so out of control. Tarantulas just don't eat that much - I've got about 90 tarantulas (including 49 new baby pink toes) but I've got two colonies of hissers, a colony of Giant caves, a colony of deaths heads/discos mixed up, and the lobster colony. Needless to say, it's too many roaches and not enough spiders to eat them all.
I hadn't thought of the cane toad - that's actually a good idea - I'd considered some sort of reptile but I don't like all of the bother with heat lamps and heat rocks, etc. etc. - toads don't need all that - hey, maybe a horned frog too Thing is, I need something that will eat ADULT hissers - both of my hisser colonies are at critical mass too - one colony can wipe out a half head of romaine, 3 bananas, an apple and a cup of cat food in one night and be looking for more...

Gail

 

[Wade]

The problem is the lobsters and hissers would climb out of reach of the terrestrial frogs.

Crested geckoes would be good, they climb and don't need special lights or much heat.

Wade

 

[danread]

If you want something thats going to eat a lot, bearded dragons would do the trick. I agree about a horned toad as well, they are eating machines!

 

[Gail]

Yeah, but bearded dragons need all that fancy light and heat and vitamins and just so much more care than I am able to put into something. I love my spiders and roaches - they don't die or get sick if I get too busy to feed them for a day or two

Gail

 

[ghost_tomb]

Get a cane toad they eat ANYTHING and loads of it too.
thou they can be hard to get hold of at a size that will eat lots, however you can get Pac-man toads with much less trouble.

Pac-man toads are half mouth half stomach. they can eat things half their size AND have teeth, thou i think cane toads will eat more when bigger (can reach 24cm in lenght and 16cm wide, in a warm environment a adult female can eat several hundred Crickets in one week!!!)

So frogs would be your best bet, the cane toad can be handled and are much more fun than pac-man toads, since they will bite anything that comes near them. Also they eat so much that their stomachs burst since they don't know when their full or when something is too big for them, cane toads don't have that problem and to give you an idea of how much they eat, in OZ they can guess the rough cane toad population of an area by the average size of the toads there. they eat THAT much