Thanks for the info! Also, I noticed that some of my roaches are dying off for now reason(possibly from stress from shipping?) and also that a lot of them are molting, but are also getting eaten in the process. What should I do about this? I tossed in some pieces of dog kibble and I saw a couple nibble at it but other than that they still continue to eat the limbs off of any freshly molted individuals. I have them underneath an infrared heat lamp if it helps.
Heat lamps will dry the enclosure very quickly and trigger them to seek moisture. Red runners like heat, but they hate getting burned, heat lamps will actually burn them out. To prevent getting dehydrated, they will eat each other to maintain moisture, as freshly molted roaches within the colony will emit the most moisture/humidity content if the enclosure is dry. Red runners are attracted to moisture and humidity and will seek to find some moisture just like moths drawn by the light. Sometimes they eat each other because they're just hungry, stressed, or for reasons I just don't know myself. Cannibalism does happen sometimes, but sometimes you can never just figure out besides making up ideas or hypothesis as to why it happens. Overall, I would get rid of the heat lamp, because it will dry out any moisture content including the fruits/veggies and water gels/crystals offered. I highly advise using a space heater, but a heat pad can substitute quite well too.
They’re in one of those containers used to hold those asian fruit jellies. The seller said he’d give me about 280+ But quite a few got crushed in the way here. Stupid me left the heat lamp on thr whole night so I lost quite a few. I did manage to get about 5 ooths and I put them in a small deli cup with damp coco fiber. Do you think that they’d manage to bounce back? I put in a wet paper towel just in case so that they have some direct source of moisture; would this help?
Yes, they'll bounce back for sure, as roaches are very adaptable insects. The colony could use some floor space for certain, it looks quite cramped in terms of floor space. Why not just buy a good sized sterlite container for your colony? It'll help with the cramped room issues and lower the stress levels of walking over each other too much.
The wet paper towel will help a bit, but they'll eat the wet paper towel for sure because they're roaches
. So not the healthiest choice for a wet paper towel, but I would recommend to use a fruit or a veggie with a lot of moisture/water content like an orange/tangerine or a cucumber to help out with moisture.
Ok something is definitely not right. I just checked up on them and I found half of them on their backs, twitching their legs. Is it possible that they were poisoned by pesticides? I’m really concerned right now, I went from 300 roaches to about less than 80 in less than 2 days.Yes, they'll bounce back for sure, as roaches are very adaptable insects. The colony could use some floor space for certain, it looks quite cramped in terms of floor space. Why not just buy a good sized sterlite container for your colony? It'll help with the cramped room issues and lower the stress levels of walking over each other too much.
The wet paper towel will help a bit, but they'll eat the wet paper towel for sure because they're roaches
Your colony is still small, so leaving fruits and veggies shouldn't be an issue until the population explodes past the 3000+ mark. That's when fruits and veggies should be offered less frequently to avoid wet feces.
Woah.... That's not definitely not normal. Did you contact the person you bought them from?? Something is off with their health and it sounds like they most likely ate something toxic or foreign. Did they eat the wet paper towel you put in there earlier? And if so, does it have anything scent related with the paper towel used? Roaches tend to eat off from moisture, which is why things like sponges in a colony's water dish should be avoided because they'll eat the sponge if it's wet.
No, they started dying long before I added the paper towel. I tried putting them in various containers and I think that the smooth floor I’ keeping them in causes them to fall on their backs and they can’t get back up since they exhaust themselves too quickly and dehydrate before keeling over. I had about 15 healthy females and am down to 4, and one of them looks a bit odd. I also somehow lost all but 2 males and even they are acting a bit odd. They didn’t eat the paper towel but I will admit that the container they came in did not look the best- 300 roaches all crammed into a 32 oz deli cup with a piece of a carrot. I moved them into a large tupperware bin with minimal ventilation and some damp peat/coco fiber. Mites are the last of my concern and I’m worried about keeping them alive. I don’t think that there’s any chemical/insecticide problem but as I mentioned before, there were quite a few that had died when I bought them. I really hope that pesticides are out of the picture since I fed some off to all of my pets and I don’t want them to die. I tried contacting the seller but we’ll see what they have to say.
It's hard to say what is wrong with them because that's not normal behavior. Something is definitely affecting them, but even I don't know for certain. You're most likely going to need to restart your colony if it gets bad. Your lats/red runners are all acting kinda strange to me. The entire colony seems slower than the usual colony. Even when I started my own colony with only 50+, they were very active. I would isolate the healthier ones to another bin to see if they get detrimental later down in time.
They need 75 f. or more to breed but lower temps won't affect the adults. I too think yours must have been poisoned - this species is one of the most durable inverts I've worked with. On several occasions I've been cleaning formally occupied enclosures and found live B. lat feeders that were hiding - after months with no food or water.