Keeping Roaches As Feeders
Why Roaches?
Roaches are an excellent feeder. In comparison roaches have a higher meat to shell ratio, more protein, and produce less smell than feeder crickets. Feeder insects are often a major source of operating expenses for many reptile enthusiasts and keepers. Many people have attempted to breed their own crickets only to find that the adults ate the young or they could not provide an adequate location for the female to lay her eggs. Furthermore, cricket cages often generate the most smell in many reptile rooms. Roaches, however, are very easy to keep and breed they produce very little smell and are very prolific breeders. The basic requirements for breeding your own feeder roaches are: food, water, egg crates, and roaches.
Which Species Should You Use?
There are a number of feeder roach species available for purchase online. We keep a variety of both feeder and pet roach species. We do not keep any "pest" roach species as we prefer not to worry about these roaches potentially infesting our reptile room. However, if you are interested in species that we do not specifically mention here we encourage you to visit Allpet Roaches Forum. This link can also be found on our Favorite Sites page. The users of this forum are very knowledgeable about roaches and are more than willing to help out with any questions you may have.
The main feeder roaches that provide the majority of our feeder needs is the Guyana Orange Spotted Roach (Blaptica dubia). These roaches are very prolific and have a very high meat ratio. They do well at room temperature or just above and once your colony is established they will proved MANY feeders for your reptiles. They are also a non-flying and non-glass climbing species. Finally, they are readily available for a reasonable price both online and at reptile shows. For these reasons they are the preferred choice of feeder roach for most hobbyists and the roach that we advocate if you are wanting to establish your own colony.
Basic Roach Set-up (non-flying/glass climbing)
Roach Bin
We keep our roach colonies in surplus 10 gallon glass aquaria. If you are like us, you will have a number of these stacked around "just in case" you need them. Additionally, you can use any number of plastic containers including Rubbermaid and Sterilite type bins. We use a standard reptile screen top that we have added an extra layer of window screen material to on the inside just in case. Again, these roaches cannot climb glass but if you stack up your housing material too high the nymphs can reach the screen and some may fit through and escape. In order to provide a secure place for the roaches to live and breed you will need to purchase cardboard egg flats vertically in the bins. These eggs flats are available for purchase online for reasonable prices. We place a small piece of paperboard (cereal boxes work great), this keeps the egg flats separated from each other and creates more climbing space for the roaches. You do not need to put a substrate in as it only makes the tanks harder to keep clean.
Food
We provide a high protein mix of commercially available cat foot, rabbit pellets, and fish pellets. The rabbit and fish food can be found at any farm/feed store and usually comes in ~30-50 lb bags. One bag of each will last you for a LONG time. We usually grind these three dry foods together usuing a simple hand cranked grinder that we purchased for ~$20 online. We have seen increased growth rates in our colonies by using this fine grind as the roaches spend less time chewing the food. However, your roaches will do just fine on unground foods. Similarly, if you do not have access to a farm store, high protein cat food will also work as a sole source of food but will not provide as balanced of a diet as our mix.
We place our food into a plastic dish in the corner of the tank. Make sure that the sides of the dish are not too slippery for the roaches to climb (a simple quick scour with sand paper or steel wool will suffice).
Water
Your growing roach colony will require a constant supply of fresh water to drink. However, the roaches will drown without some way to get out of the water container. Some people add small stones to their plastic water dishes (again with roughed up sides). We prefer to provide water in a slighly different manner. We use water crystals. These can be purchased easily online in bulk and will expand when water is added to them. We have found that this is the easiest and safest way to provide water to your roaches. You may also suppliment your roaches water and food offerings with fresh fruit or vegetables but this is not required. If you do, choose to feed fruit and vegetables, make sure that they do not mold as this will endanger your entire colony.
Temperature
We keep our roach colonies at slightly above room temperature (upper 70s or low 80s). If you find that your roach colony does not seem to be producing many babies, you can add an external heat source to the tank. This external heat source can be in the form of a ceramic heat emitter or under tank heater. We prefer a ceramic heat emitter that has been dimmed. This will provide your roaches with a basking spot similar to what you would provide for a bearded dragon or similar lizard. The temperatures in the basking spot should not go above 95 degrees F.
Final Thoughts
A common mistake when establishing a roach colony is to feed out of it too soon. Be patient with your colony. When you think that you have enough roaches to sustain your feeder needs wait until the roach colony doubles! This will ensure that there are enough females to produce enough babies to keep up with you reptile's feeding needs. Mature females will produce about 20-35 baby roaches every ~ 2 months. The nymphs (baby roaches) reach adulthood at ~4-5 months. You will notice that this species displays sexual dimorphism with males being more slender and having wings while females are wider without wings. The lifespan of these roaches is anywhere from 1-2 years. Finally, your roach colony does not need very many males to produce babies. In fact, too many males can be problematic as they will fight over the females. As a result, we recommend that you regularly cull your colony of males (they make great feeders for your larger reptiles).
When we have surplus feeders available will will put them up on our available page (http://scaledvertebrates.weebly.com/roaches-and-other-invertebrates.html).
Please do not hesitate to use the contact us page with any questions you may have about our website or the breeding of roaches.