A Silly Annoying Event....

WYSIWYG

SpiderLoco
Old Timer
Joined
Jun 18, 2003
Messages
489
Hiya,

I'm a little annoyed about something that happened last night.

I don't know about you, but I have a hard time telling the males apart from
the females in the lobster roaches. I THINK the females are the longer ones
with shorter wings. It seems if that's the case, that maybe when looking at
the immatures, you can tell the difference because some are long and pretty
even all around -- like nearly perfect ovals. Others are small near the head
end and broad near the back end, so maybe those are young males? I'm not
sure. Maybe it means nothing.

But here's the annoying event....

Last night, I pulled out an adult lobster to feed to one of my GBB juveniles.
I thought it MIGHT be female, but it's getting harder to find what I think are
males, so I went ahead and fed it to her/him.

Later on, when I checked, I noticed the spider was on one end and on the
other end, was the roach, with a big giant ootheca-thingy sticking out
behind her. So I figured, rats. I was disappointed I had fed off a female
that was getting ready to give birth to my spider. I decided to take it out
because it seemed to still be alive. After all, it had been in there with the
spider for an hour or two and the spider obviously wasn't interested.

So as I made my attempt to go take the roach out, the spider changed its
mind and decided it was chowtime after all. :p

Today, I don't even see the ootheca in the container...but to be on the safe
side, and because of all the webbing, I'm going to move the spider to a new
home just in case there are some babies running around and hiding in there.

Anyway, how can you tell a gravid female from one that isn't gravid when it
goes to roaches? I have 5 species of feeder roaches and I do my best to
feed off males rather than females, but it's hard to tell them apart. The
only obvious ones are the Blaptica dubia, at least when the males mature.
Other than that, I'm just guessing.

Any ideas? (Sorry about the wacky linespacing. One of these days I'll learn
how to NOT use the enter button at the end of every line since this thing
automatically wraps). :p :p :p

Wysi
 

Dark Raptor

Arachnoprince
Old Timer
Joined
Oct 18, 2004
Messages
1,062
WYSIWYG said:
Anyway, how can you tell a gravid female from one that isn't gravid when it
goes to roaches? I have 5 species of feeder roaches and I do my best to
feed off males rather than females, but it's hard to tell them apart. The
only obvious ones are the Blaptica dubia, at least when the males mature.
Other than that, I'm just guessing.
Gravid females, generally, have very large abdomen.
The easiest way to sex roach - check their last sternit (last segment on their abdomen). If you see two of them - it is male, if there is one, large sternit... it is female.

I've made some pics with G. portentosa and Blaberus "giganteus" here:

http://darkraptor.fateback.com/karaczany.html

PS. You don't need to worry about ootheca. Without proper incubation it will die.
 

ghost_tomb

Arachnoknight
Old Timer
Joined
Jun 18, 2004
Messages
212
I had a similar thing happen only it gave birth while my babies t.blondi was eating it. Still got babies running around inside the tank, and a few are escaping:(

But I’m pretty certain that lobster roaches aren't a threat to T's molted or other wise, though I’m pretty sure that some roach sp's will be.
 

roach dude

Arachnobaron
Old Timer
Joined
Jan 5, 2005
Messages
401
the males have longer 'bits' at the end of there abdomen then the females . dark raport great website\!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
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