arachnofitz
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hi guys.. is was wondering if it would be ok to put hissers and dubias in one enclosure?? all of them are breeders by the way
Q> is it ok put hissers and dubias in one enclosure??
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arachnofitz
Arachnosquire
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looks like theyr ok but i wonder if there might be competition in food and im scared if they would eat each others nymphs
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This would be better off in the Insects subforum. 
There will be competition for food and yes, it is possible they will eat each other's nymphs. Generally speaking, one species tends to gradually become the dominant species and the other will end up dying off.
I've never actually had any experience with this happening though - this is all based off of what I have heard/read.
There will be competition for food and yes, it is possible they will eat each other's nymphs. Generally speaking, one species tends to gradually become the dominant species and the other will end up dying off.
I've never actually had any experience with this happening though - this is all based off of what I have heard/read.
twentyeggs
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The hisses will kill off the dubias without a doubt. Hissers are very territorial and spend ALOT of time charging pushing hissing and ramming each other. If you've ever owned some you will hear them fighting all the time. Especially the males. Dubias are the opposite. They live communally.
As for eating of the eggs it's not necessarily true since both roaches give live birth unless they know they are about to die or temperatures become too hot. Dubias will push their egg sacks in and out of their bodies to regulate heat. In the rare event dubias expell and abandon their egg sacks other roaches will kill or eat them. But it's not how your dubias will die off since it is so rare. the stress of being physically abused will prevent your Dubias from breeding and this will be te likely cause of your dubias failing to thrive. Also at a young age dubias are very soft and a charge from an adult hisser will easily smear them across your egg crate.
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How do you know that?
twentyeggs
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I edited my post to explain further
arachnofitz
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wow.. thats really detaild.. just the right answer.. ill be separating them 2nite as soon as i get home... thanks a lot twentyeggs!!
twentyeggs
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you can even just cut a piece of cardboard and make yourself a partition. just make sure its goes all the way to the top. the best way i can think of doing this is use some hot glue (or duct tape) and glue a partition in the middle of the tank, then hot glue a second partition to the lid so that when it opens and closes it kinda works like scissors where the two partitions slide past each other ensuring the top and bottom are closed off.
one more thing, for the hissers, size does matter. because they are so territorial, male hissers generally need about 3-5 inch diameters surrounding their "spot" where no other male hissers is allowed to venture. so if you have a lot of hissers in a medium size area where a few of the more dominant males can picks spot while the others cant, they will fight fight fight and hiss hiss hiss. you might notice broken antenna, missing legs and a larger number of dead or dying roaches. so you can do one of the following, A: get them a bigger cage, (which i wouldn't unless i was keeping them as pets). B: or get them a smaller cage. a smaller cage prevents any way of a male to claim a spot so territorial behavior cannot be initiated. The longer a male hisser is allowed to sit in his "spot" or claimed territory, the aggressive they become towards other hissers.
as for dubia? easy, you can just throw a loaf of french bread in there, and they will eat themselves a little roach hotel. other than that, throw in some ground up cat/dog food and your done. if you don't wanna deal with water crystals regularly throw in some fruits and veggies. i use water crystals but still, when my veggies get a little too ripe for me i just throw them in my tank instead of the garbage so the dubias can have them. I can put a quarter pound stock of broccoli in my feeder tank and it will be gone in a day. they love it. if you are planning to use food as their source of water, still at least once a month spray the walls of their cage with some water or give them some water. some dubias are stupid, and will not eat the fresh food, just the dry food, and will die of dehydration.
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I agree with this statement, from everything I've experienced most species will coexist in the shorter term with no obvious problems but in the long run one will 'win'. If I dumped the 7 species I keep all together, my bet would be that in a year or two there would be nothing left but the Lobsters, those things just seem super competitive (next in line would be E. distante). My lobster and lateralis bins are next to each other and I've found that the lobsters will colonize and breed in with the lateralis while the individual lat's seem to do fine with the lobsters but don't proliferate there. Could be the simple reason of the lat's ooths being eaten while the Lobsters having 'live birth' doesn't give the lat's that opportunity.
I very typically find random 'strays' of other species mixed in with pretty much all my colonies and have yet to witness any inter-species aggression. You'd think the seemingly aggressive hisser males would be an issue but they appear to be concerned only with other hisser males and don't bother with anything else. That colony tends to be pretty crowded though so maybe they're just too busy amongst themselves to bother. My hisser and dubia bins have been next to each other for years so I always find crossovers in both directions but have never noticed any signs of actual cross colonization. Could be whichever one has 'critical mass' ends up dominant...
Just a note for those concerned about household infestation. I'm pretty 'loose' about containment (no lids on anything, just vasilene around the bin rims, eggcrate/oakbark slabs stacked almost to the top), so I occasionally get individual strays around the house. I have yet to find any species that has managed to breed/proliferate outside of the bins (once an individual female hisser spit out a brood under my sewing machine but she was likely already loaded up when she escaped). Considering how many I find in the wrong bin it seems I must get a quite a few escapees but they seem to prefer life in the bins so either find their way back home or to a neighbors bin rather than wander the the household. I'm in New England so winters are very dry but summer conditions can be quite humid/tropical and even then have never had an issue. I think most of the 'hobby species' are somehow not well suited to household living and require more specific conditions to proliferate.
Bill
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Outcompete? Absolutely. If male hissers needed "3-5 inch diameters" of space surrounding them, the tank size for a colony would be enormous. Hissers IME huddle together just like any other communal roach. Males will certainly fight one another over females and jockey for location but not to the extent where there's any real savagery. I really only see it when there's a disturbance in the room(me), food being added to the tank or when there's baby makin'/birthin'.
I've never seen healthy dubia refuse fresh food(w/ exceptions & even those exceptions disappear after the other stuff is eaten)...usually they swarm over it like a drunken Thanksgiving feast.
Bill, you're in a good spot to impede infestation from the tropicals but lateralis, in particular, have already established themselves in pockets of CA, AZ & TX(?). I'd be more cautious if I lived in one of those sun drenched locales.
I've never seen healthy dubia refuse fresh food(w/ exceptions & even those exceptions disappear after the other stuff is eaten)...usually they swarm over it like a drunken Thanksgiving feast.
Bill, you're in a good spot to impede infestation from the tropicals but lateralis, in particular, have already established themselves in pockets of CA, AZ & TX(?). I'd be more cautious if I lived in one of those sun drenched locales.
InvertFix
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This is so true. I put food in my tubs and before I can even close the lid they stampede onto it and then there is no visible food or floor left to the eye.
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But aren't those outdoor colonies? Have they established sustaining populations in houses? Even here I can find native species outside but they have no interest in my house...
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Well, the only place I've personally witnessed a large population is a rest stop south of Tucson. Whether or not they were attracted to the lights or not like the hordes of insects inside and outside of the building is a matter of conjecture. It would be interesting to hear from someone living in that area or another known location to see if the lats are entering homes and such.
twentyeggs
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dude!! i mean.. each to their own and all the power to you, but you allow your roaches to escape and live in your house? i couldn't do that... my fiance would be PISSED! if she ever caught a roach in the bed, im pretty sure she would be the one threat posing at me instead of my tarantulas!!
have you ever seen a PISSED threat posing fiance?? me neither but loose roaches would do it i think...
im just curious as to why? is it for keeping the smell down? dubia roaches don' t generally smell but old egg crates do and i know fresh air drastically keeps the odors down because moisture can't get trapped, but i use screens!
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i'm in west texas. they live in my front and back yard. i bring them in my house and breed them. sometimes they escape in the house. never had an infestation but my house is clean and dry. i hope this helps.
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I guess I was a bit vague, didn't mean to give the impression that I allow roaches to be running all over my house, maybe once in a month or two I'll flip on a light and catch one on the bathroom floor or something.
If I was finding droppings in my cupboards there would be big changes made. I just know that they must be escaping more often than that as I find them in the wrong bins, they have to get there somehow. It's difficult for them to leave a bin over the barrier but easy to get back into a bin as there is no barrier on the outside. Seems that when they do get out they don't tend to go far, right to back in or to the next bin over, mostly.
Now when I leave the door open on the Tokay's and there's the 10" male running around, that's one I don't want under the covers with me. But he always goes to the same place so I've got his number, so far anyway...
I'm getting too old for that, I meet someone now I'm pretty quick to find out if the critters, guns and the occasional motorcycle part are good to be in the house. The girl I lived with for many years was ok with the bugs, birds and geckos, etc. as was my more recently former one. Ya just have to pick someone who embraces your lifestyle or... guess I dunno what 'or', I just don't go there.
Used to use screens but found they really don't do much, short of being hermetically sealed in the roachies seem to find a way out anyway. Can't tell you how many times I've seem them upside down on the screens, even with 3" of bugstop on the bins. I probably tend to stack the interior stuff to high, particularly when the population gets dense and I just keep adding on. I try to control the numbers with temperature and food but it's very difficult to keep stable numbers, sometimes I think it's just cyclical and defies any of my attempts at regulation.
Bottom line, it's easier for me to toss in food or snag a quick one to feed to something when they're open. Don't have any odor issues, if you keep them clean and fairly dry in the humid weather it's all good, winter is easy because it's so dry anyway. I try to keep a small dermestid population going in the big hisser and dubia bins, I think that helps keep it tidy down in the lower depths where the trouble starts.
Bill
arachnofitz
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thanks for the tips.. gosh i never thought that its a bad idea to put 2 species of roaches in one tank.. ill be providing thier own tanks from now on.. question about hissers thou, whats the approx size that a male hisser breeds?? i have a 4.5inch female and a 3inch male, can the male breed at that size?? most of my males are small compared to the females. i wonder why