I'm so excited! My B. discoidales colony is finally taking off!

I hate crickets, so in January of this year I decided I would try to start a roach colony. I bought about 20 B. discoidales from Botar at that time. Today I rehoused them from a rubbermaid container to a 10 gallon aquarium. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I now have 241 roaches!

I only have 9 adult roaches right now. Quite a few of my original ones died a while back. I'm pretty sure they either died of old age or not enough ventilation. I fixed my ventilation problem by opening up the container more. I'm hoping some of the juvies I have molt to adulthood in the next month.

I would like to ask all of you roach people how large I need to let my colony get before I start feeding the roaches to my t's?

you are there

think on this... in ~4months your population increased by a factor of 10

do you really want that to happen again?

oh, i know it wouldn't be that linear cuz all the immatures can reproduce yet... but it's still food for thought (and food for spiders, come to think of it =P )

That's true...I hadn't thought about it that way. I just can't wait until I don't have to keep so many crickets around here. I just hope my t's will eat the roaches. I have to admit that I will feel bad about using these roaches as feeders because I like them. I get some sick satisfaction when I see a t jump on a cricket.

yeah, i got attached to my Lobster roaches trying to get their colony up and running

it's gotten to the point when i see roach in my house (the joys of living in ghetto apartments) i don't think it's yucky.. i just think it is underfed =P

numbers?

how many T's would you need to start a roach colony? and whats a good arguement to the wife to justify gettin a roach colony? she hates roaches lmao

jbrd said:

how many T's would you need to start a roach colony? and whats a good arguement to the wife to justify gettin a roach colony? she hates roaches lmao

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Tell her they are beetles, and get some that look like kind of like beetles. I only say this because that's what my roomate thought was in one of the tanks for a while before asking. How much does she know about insects?

jbrd said:

how many T's would you need to start a roach colony? and whats a good arguement to the wife to justify gettin a roach colony? she hates roaches lmao

Click to expand...

I went with about 100 B. dubia nymphs (of various sizes), got them in Jan, and started feeding excess males off slowly a couple of months ago. I feed almost all the T's with the roaches now. I had also cranked up the heat to get them to breed faster. I have a lot of baby roaches running around now. I've turned the heat off for now so they don't grow quite as fast.

Erm, I just realized I misread your post. T's? hmm.. I have 25 now. I also have 6 crested geckos, but I have since discovered that only 2 will eat the roaches (or at least recognize them as food). I bought the colony back when I had 2 cresteds and maybe 10 T's, but I had planned on breeding the cresteds..... Also, the crested's can't eat an adult B dubia, it's too big. So maybe I didn't answer your question very well, but that might give you some ideas.

Btw, you can pick a slower growing roach species if you think you'll be keeping a smaller amount of T's. Lobster roaches breed like crazy. B dubia..is somewhere in the middle. Orange head roaches are slower than the dubia i think.

These are B. discoidales roaches, so they aren't the fastest breeders. I currently have 30 tarantulas of various sizes.

I say wait 'til you see a good range of nymphs at various sizes, and you begin to think "It's too much"