Roach Question - Important!

[LindsayMarie]

I recently received around 40-50 dubias. They were brought in to start an unrelated colony then eventually mix with my already huge established colony. I wanted to add new blood, you know? Well anyways I noticed that one of the nymphs had some color discoloration (white) around its edges, mostly by the "wing" area. Then a few days ago I went to show my spouse and it had "spread" or gotten worse and now another 8-9 or so had the same thing! I quickly smushed all the ones. Went through one by one looking at and only putting healthy ones into a newly cleaned bin. All I have in there is aspen shavings (no egg crates for now) and a food/water bowl. To me it kind of looked like a fungi or mold, but how? why? Makes no sense. I am keeping a close eye on them, at the same time I now have them far away from my other feeders and are now only being fed gloved. Just in case. I dont see any others developing the issue. My question is has anyone else had something like this? I never have. I have a very large colony of dubias which I started a while ago and never seen anything like this. I also have had lobsters and distantis in the past and still have hissers and newly acquired discoids. First time to see anything like this though?

The whole idea of getting the unrelated dubias was to get a small established colony of them going then merge them with mine. New blood. But if they have something or HAD something, thats not a good idea and they are obviously not good as feeders either. I have put a newly shed adult male from my bin into this new bloodline, to see if he catches what they have. All the unrelateds are nymphs so he is easy to tell apart

Any ideas? Thoughts, suggestions, opinions...etc? Thanks, Lindsay

 

[aggie08]

You sound experienced, and I'm not very, but I thought I'd throw it out there. Maybe they were getting ready to molt and had some dried out areas? Just a guess.

 

[jw73]

I had a roach in my colony with something like you wrote. It was nymph about 1" long. I removed it from my colony and since then I havn't seen any roach with something like that.

 

[LindsayMarie]

You sound experienced, and I'm not very, but I thought I'd throw it out there. Maybe they were getting ready to molt and had some dried out areas? Just a guess.

Yeah it definitely wasnt a molt thing. I am stumped!

 

[LindsayMarie]

I had a roach in my colony with something like you wrote. It was nymph about 1" long. I removed it from my colony and since then I havn't seen any roach with something like that.

All the nymphs that had the problem we squished, they ranged in size from 1/4"- 1+ inch. There were about 8-9, when originally I only saw 1 like that when they first arrived. Like I said I killed those off, cleaned everything out and left the bin pretty bare for now. So far so good, although I havent checked today. The adult male I put in from my colony is doing ok, no signs of illness?!

I am surprised no one else has responded. Alot of very experienced bug keepers frequent here. Any ideas? Experiences? Thanks, Lindsay