DubiaW
Arachnobaron
- Joined
- Jan 10, 2017
- Messages
- 471
This is my first post here so I am going to give you a little background. In the future I will try to keep it shorter.
I've recenly started a colony of Blaptica dubia and Gromphadorhina portentosa to feed my T's. I started back into the pet hobby by accident when my neighbor who was an avid keeper came to my house one day with a small stack of deli containers and clear plastic shoe box. His wife had just had a baby and he couldn't keep them anymore. He shoved the stack into my hands and rattled off some latin names and promised to come back with more as well as a starter colony of B. dubia for feeding. They were all housed with coconut husk and peat moss and there were B. dubia nymphs burrowed into the substrate. He never wrote down the latin names for me and never returned with anything else. I started feeding them crickets but wanted to eventually start a roach colony like he had. As the slings grew I was able to identify them during the rehousing process and found out what I had expected all along. My neighbor had given me a handful of aggressive, reclusive and atractive T's that were not suitable for beginers: Poecilotheria ornata, Psalmopoeus irminia, and Stromatopelma calceatum. This isn't a problem since I used to keep venomous snakes and worked in a venom lab/serpentarium in college. Having been bitten by a sidewinder once there just isn't anything in the world of T's that makes me that nervous.
I switched from crickets to roaches a few months back and to my excitement found that a roach colony is insainly easy and cheep to maintain. I started feeding my T's roaches but due to the reclusive nature of the species I only saw them eat a few times. When I was rehousing my male P. irmina I was distressed to find that almost all the roaches that I had dropped into his enclosure were still alive and well, burried in the coconut husk substrate. This promted me to rehouse all of my T's to see who was eating and who wasn't. Luckily the rest of them had eaten most of the roaches but there were a lot that had burried themselves in the coconut fiber substrate. (I had also provided crickets when my roach colony dwindled so everything was ok). I had collected a few Hadrurus arizoniensis and Aphonopelma chalcodes locally and housed them in a mix of local decomposed granit sand and coconut fiber. Not a single roach had burried themselves in this mixture. It retains moisture nearly the same as coconut fiber but the roaches cannot dig in as easily as they did before. I also made the substrate shallower (resulting in a higher need for misting for the tropical species). I gave the P. ornata and S. calceatum locally collected cholla wood hides to make up for the shallow substrate and they use them. P. irmina turned his plastic plants into a silk home as he always has. I also have a Scolopendra subspinipes housed with the same mix, just a little lighter on the granit sand because he can dig the roaches up. No problems with digging roaches anymore, just the occaisonal hisser that hangs off the lid like a cat over a swimming pool as my S. subspinipes prowls.
Everything seems to be going fine but I am concerned about my tropical species and considering moving away from roaches as T food so I can go back to coconut husk and peat moss. Has anyone else ran into this problem with roaches and what solutions have you come up with to overcome it?
I've recenly started a colony of Blaptica dubia and Gromphadorhina portentosa to feed my T's. I started back into the pet hobby by accident when my neighbor who was an avid keeper came to my house one day with a small stack of deli containers and clear plastic shoe box. His wife had just had a baby and he couldn't keep them anymore. He shoved the stack into my hands and rattled off some latin names and promised to come back with more as well as a starter colony of B. dubia for feeding. They were all housed with coconut husk and peat moss and there were B. dubia nymphs burrowed into the substrate. He never wrote down the latin names for me and never returned with anything else. I started feeding them crickets but wanted to eventually start a roach colony like he had. As the slings grew I was able to identify them during the rehousing process and found out what I had expected all along. My neighbor had given me a handful of aggressive, reclusive and atractive T's that were not suitable for beginers: Poecilotheria ornata, Psalmopoeus irminia, and Stromatopelma calceatum. This isn't a problem since I used to keep venomous snakes and worked in a venom lab/serpentarium in college. Having been bitten by a sidewinder once there just isn't anything in the world of T's that makes me that nervous.
I switched from crickets to roaches a few months back and to my excitement found that a roach colony is insainly easy and cheep to maintain. I started feeding my T's roaches but due to the reclusive nature of the species I only saw them eat a few times. When I was rehousing my male P. irmina I was distressed to find that almost all the roaches that I had dropped into his enclosure were still alive and well, burried in the coconut husk substrate. This promted me to rehouse all of my T's to see who was eating and who wasn't. Luckily the rest of them had eaten most of the roaches but there were a lot that had burried themselves in the coconut fiber substrate. (I had also provided crickets when my roach colony dwindled so everything was ok). I had collected a few Hadrurus arizoniensis and Aphonopelma chalcodes locally and housed them in a mix of local decomposed granit sand and coconut fiber. Not a single roach had burried themselves in this mixture. It retains moisture nearly the same as coconut fiber but the roaches cannot dig in as easily as they did before. I also made the substrate shallower (resulting in a higher need for misting for the tropical species). I gave the P. ornata and S. calceatum locally collected cholla wood hides to make up for the shallow substrate and they use them. P. irmina turned his plastic plants into a silk home as he always has. I also have a Scolopendra subspinipes housed with the same mix, just a little lighter on the granit sand because he can dig the roaches up. No problems with digging roaches anymore, just the occaisonal hisser that hangs off the lid like a cat over a swimming pool as my S. subspinipes prowls.
Everything seems to be going fine but I am concerned about my tropical species and considering moving away from roaches as T food so I can go back to coconut husk and peat moss. Has anyone else ran into this problem with roaches and what solutions have you come up with to overcome it?
