What is your roach water setup?

[chemosh6969]

I have some b. dubias and while feeding them is easy, my watering setup sucks.

Right now I use a yogurt lid and throw some water moist crystals in there and add water. The problem is that the thing dries up quickly. So quickly in fact that I have to add water each morning and evening.

Does anyone have some sort of automated thing they use that they could share their secret with me?

 

[bugmankeith]

I just fill a reptile water dish with less than an inch of water and mist the cage. Misting the cage with water is much better though, they cant drown by misting, but it helps quench their thirst and raise humidity.

 

[xelda]

It sounds like the yogurt lid is too shallow, so since there's not much water to begin with, it evaporates in a short amount of time. Try to find a container that's about 1/2 to 3/4" tall. If you've got any heat pads or lights shining down on the cage, make sure they're on the opposite side of the cage.

 

[Ganoderma]

i use anything that holds water. roaches are not as dumb as crickets :wall:

 

[Takumaku]

I use carrots for my watering needs.

 

[Schlyne]

I have used the gel, but now I use fruit and veggies for my watering needs.

I usually use carrots, apples, and oranges.

 

[Hedorah99]

Same here. I use produce as the water source.

 

[DarkRAM]

I use the water gel.

 

[cacoseraph]

crystals

but i let the crystals sit in a tub of water, then dish them out after they are "full". it takes about 4-8 hours for the crystals to fully fill with water, iirc... much much more than an hour at any rate

it sounds like your crystals don't get enough water. when mine are fully expanded they are something like 20-100x as large as the dry form. i reckon only one to three crystals would suck up all the water in a yogurt container lid

 

[chemosh6969]

crystals

but i let the crystals sit in a tub of water, then dish them out after they are "full". it takes about 4-8 hours for the crystals to fully fill with water, iirc... much much more than an hour at any rate

it sounds like your crystals don't get enough water. when mine are fully expanded they are something like 20-100x as large as the dry form. i reckon only one to three crystals would suck up all the water in a yogurt container lid

I have been putting them in a container filled with water so they are large when I put them in the container. After I put them in the lid I'd also add water.

I did notice that when I had produce to put in that the crystals would last longer.

Last night I filled the lid of a 25 spindle of dvdrs with water and crystals. I used an egg crate to build a ramp into it.

I was kinda hoping someone had some sort of drip system that would work for me.

Thanks for the help.

 

[CockroachYet]

-I use carrot and potato for my colony of hissers, but I have a question: my hissers custom to regurgitating occassionally a drop of water from their mouths, and this drop is setted on the surface of the egg cartons or on the walls of the cage. This is a normal behaviour or something are wrong?
-Thank you, best regards.

 

[BugToxin]

I use the cricket quencher that you can buy at the petstore. I know that it's more expensive than the crystals, but I like the conveience. I use a water dish to fill with the blue stuff, and then re-fill them a time or two by adding watter to the crystals when they dry out or get used up. They don't seem to stay full as long the second time around but it does make the jar last longer.

 

[Code Monkey]

Water gel/crystals plus they get a fair amount of their moisture from fresh vegetables and fruit.

 

[Czalz]

I made an all-in-one food for my roaches.

I first make a dry mix that includes oats,wheat bran, rabbit pellets, and dog food. I blend all of the dry food together into a powder. I always keep an excess of this dry food mix (3-4 lbs), so that the rest of the process is pretty simple. I have the exact dry food recipe, if you want it just pm me.

I then put 4 carrots, 1/2 cantaloupe (rind on), and 1 cup of water in the blender and liquify it, then I add 1.5 cups of the dry mix and blend it to a good consistency (basically mush)........Then use a spoon to dip the mush into ice trays and freeze it. The cubes of prepared food pop out just like ice cubes and are super simple to feed. I just have flat plastic lids (butter dish type) that I put the cubes on, so when they start to melt it is all contained in the lid. Surprisingly this is never messy at all, but is actually quite clean....the roaches seem to "lick the bowl".

All you really have to do is pay attention to how much they are eating daily, and try to put just the right amount of food in so they eat every bit of it. The cubes split easily when frozen, so I cut some of them in 1/2 and even 1/4 to make sure I don't have leftovers.

This particular mix has done very well (all of my roaches eat it like crazy). It doesn't seem to have issues like mold either. Most of my roaches eat all that I give them each day, but even when they don't, it just dries up.


Also, if you want to get ahead you can pop all of the cubes out and put them in a freezer bag and just do it over again, unless you just have a great amount of ice trays and want to double the batch. The above recipe makes 3 regular ice trays full (medium cubes)

Later,

Charles


p.s. This recipe is CHEAP compared to any commercial product,and is an excellent source of food and water for your roaches.

 

[Cirith Ungol]

The best natural water source must be cucumber. It contains something in the order of 95% water. I've used it successfully for a long time now.

Another possibility that's quite cheap but not totally reliable is gelatin. You cook water and pour the gelatin pouder in it, then put it in the fridge to cool off. That way you get a block of almost pure water. The gelatin is an animal product, thus free of any nasty stuff you don't want your feeders to eat. The downside with the gelatin is that it will slowly liquify again if you keep it too warm (something arround 30-35 degrees Celcius). So cooler temps, like arround 24 C should work better for a longer time.

I've tried a water fountain with one type of roach, an upside down bottle and a basin that would automatically refill. That was a nasty mistake. It worked well for a week, then I started to find roaches drowned inside the bottle and the basin started to fill up with all sorts of crap. Not long after I discovered that the water was basically pouring out of the basin, emptying the bottle slowly, because all the stuff in the basin sucked the water out into the container. I had to battle mould for 3 months, had to make 2 complete cleanups and lost about 50% of the roaches.
So... no good idea, unless you constantly clean the basin of the fountain!

 

[bugmankeith]

I heard cucumber is bad for roaches, and they dislike it.

 

[Cirith Ungol]

I heard cucumber is bad for roaches, and they dislike it.

Do you have any more details on that?

Mine have neither shown any signs of bad health during use, nor have they shunned it.

 

[Code Monkey]

I heard cucumber is bad for roaches, and they dislike it.

Sounds like an invert equivalent of a Wive's Tale. There isn't much more innocuous than cucumber. Cockroaches will avoid anything they don't like if given a choice, so if they're consuming while other food is present, it's a safe bet they don't dislike it and your "I heard" is the first time I ever heard this claimed.

 

[bugmankeith]

Any book will tell you cockroaches hate cucumbers, they have no nutrition for cockroaches, which is probably why they wont eat them unless confined and thats all they have to eat.

I had german roaches in my house and I kept some and they wouldnt touch a cucumber, they even stayed away from the corner of the cage which had the cucumber slice. They eat almost anything, but not the cucumber!

 

[Czalz]

Any book will tell you cockroaches hate cucumbers, they have no nutrition for cockroaches, which is probably why they wont eat them unless confined and thats all they have to eat.

I had german roaches in my house and I kept some and they wouldnt touch a cucumber, they even stayed away from the corner of the cage which had the cucumber slice. They eat almost anything, but not the cucumber!

I don't know about roaches disliking cucumbers (never asked), but I do think it would be a stretch to say cucumbers were BAD for roaches (previous post). I remember someone else posting a while back that their roaches wouldn't eat cheese...hmmmm.....I guess they are pretty picky. (sarcasm)

I can't think of anything in cucumbers that would be any different from other vegetables, etc. I have fed my roaches yellow squash and they seemed to like it, but to lend to your theory I have never tested cucumber and so cannot refute your claim to it being detested by roaches.

We need to conduct a waste of time experiment and all go the store and get cucumbers to feed to our roaches and then restart this debate with some solid evidence.............<czal runs to the store>...not