Why is My Dubia Roach Pinkish After Death? Need Help!

[Zolo]

Hi everyone,

I’ve been keeping Dubia roaches for a couple of months now, and recently I’ve noticed something unusual. One of my roaches died, and its body turned a pinkish color. This has never happened before—the last time I had a roach die, it looked normal with no unusual symptoms or discoloration.

To make things more concerning, I have another roach that’s moving super slowly, almost like it’s dying, but it’s still alive. I’m worried there might be something wrong with my colony or their environment.

Has anyone else experienced this pinkish discoloration in dead Dubia roaches? Could it be a sign of illness, stress, or something environmental like temperature or humidity? Any advice on what might be causing this and how to help the slow-moving roach would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance for your help!

 

[fcat]

I'm going to guess some type of mycosis but it's just a guess.

Can we see a picture of their enclosure?

Just to rule out...you didn't feed anything red like beets and maybe they couldn't groom that area?

 

[Introvertebrate]

Some of the crickets I bought recently turned pink upon death. Same fungus? Bacterial maybe?

 

[Ratmosphere]

That's wild I've never experienced that before! Definitely will look out for any recent deaths in my colony to see if I find something similar.

 

[Kada]

No idea if this is related. But it could be. I remember roughly 10 years ago I hired a new person to help with mushroom farms. This person was filling bags with substrate before sterilization. On different days he would also move finished bags that were inoculated to their final shelving units. We had a massive outbreak of bright pink contamination. Long story short, after a lab helped us test, this guy had an infection he didn't tell anyone about "hong Kong foot". It actually spread into the spawn and started fruiting and becoming pink.

Not saying this post is that. But pink is a common fungal color. We even eat pink oyster mushrooms.

Food for thought

 

[Spiceroll]

We see this from time to time in the labs I've been in and over the years I've seen it happen to a variety of roach species such as German, Dubia, Lobster, American, etc. My coworkers and I generally call it/assume it is Serratia though this is a genus of bacteria and it is possible there are several infections/strains out there that could cause roaches to turn red. In my experience it's something that appears as dead roaches decompose especially if enclosure conditions are crowded, dirty and humid. I've never seen evidence of it directly impacting colony health/healthy roaches but it can be considered a sign that the roaches are stressed or sick if there is a lot of it present. We typically clean out/replace roach enclosures, make sure food and water and harborage are fresh, and make sure things aren't too humid to keep the levels down. After a while it would end up disappearing.

Here's a couple of American roaches that had it for comparison. American roaches are the most common species I find with it in a lab setting.