djfishygillz
Avid Member
Good choice as a feeder for chams? any weird things about them before i go all in and try to use them to replace my cricketS?
blatta lateralis
- Thread starter djfishygillz
- Start date
They are really fast and they have eggs not live birth witch was the down fall for me.
fluxlizard
Avid Member
I see you are in california.
I'm on the east coast with cold winters- many nights in the teens, some nights in the single digits, snow on the ground some of the winter.
This species of roach has had no problem surviving outdoors here in this weather.
This is a pest species- they can and will infest and exterminators now are trained to deal with them. Earlier this summer we went camping at the beach near a navy base and were unpleasantly surprise with lots of flying males in the campsite after dark. This species originally hitchhiked home from Iraq in military gear and has infested neighborhoods surrounding bases around the country.
Stupidly before they were popular I ordered several thousand to start a colony, assured by a website that popularly sells them that they were perfectly safe like many other species of roach.
Before long after I began using them, I began to get nervous about them- they were unlike lobster roaches, hissing roaches and dubia roaches all of which I've bred and used in the millions over the years. Something about they way they looked and moved made me nervous and I began to worry they could be a problem so I fed out my colony until they were "gone".
Or so I thought.
Years later they are still found out in my lizard building- even preferring the cold room in the winter where temps remain in the 50s. They have also established in my yard- I find them beneath anything left out on the ground like boards or bags of mulch, rocks, logs, etc. Even when there is snow on the ground I can find them alive beneath these things.
I have bred and fed literally millions of lobsters and hundreds of thousands of hissers and dubia and they have *never* been a problem like this. Escapees disappear and are never seen again. This roach not so...
Thankfully I do not keep roaches in the house- I have my lizard building, and also thank heavens they have not made their way into the house and have been content to remain in the yard and in the lizard building after several years.
If you have weather milder or similar to mine in the winter, I urge you to not order this species. They are known by exterminating companies to be infestive pests and are illegal in some states now, and that now includes my own recently. A simple google search will confirm this.
There are lots of much better species- I highly recommend dubia for most homes- non-infestive, can't climb smooth surfaces. Lobsters if you must have something prolific and tiny babies for newborn chameleons, but they will hang around in the home a while if any escape...
I'm on the east coast with cold winters- many nights in the teens, some nights in the single digits, snow on the ground some of the winter.
This species of roach has had no problem surviving outdoors here in this weather.
This is a pest species- they can and will infest and exterminators now are trained to deal with them. Earlier this summer we went camping at the beach near a navy base and were unpleasantly surprise with lots of flying males in the campsite after dark. This species originally hitchhiked home from Iraq in military gear and has infested neighborhoods surrounding bases around the country.
Stupidly before they were popular I ordered several thousand to start a colony, assured by a website that popularly sells them that they were perfectly safe like many other species of roach.
Before long after I began using them, I began to get nervous about them- they were unlike lobster roaches, hissing roaches and dubia roaches all of which I've bred and used in the millions over the years. Something about they way they looked and moved made me nervous and I began to worry they could be a problem so I fed out my colony until they were "gone".
Or so I thought.
Years later they are still found out in my lizard building- even preferring the cold room in the winter where temps remain in the 50s. They have also established in my yard- I find them beneath anything left out on the ground like boards or bags of mulch, rocks, logs, etc. Even when there is snow on the ground I can find them alive beneath these things.
I have bred and fed literally millions of lobsters and hundreds of thousands of hissers and dubia and they have *never* been a problem like this. Escapees disappear and are never seen again. This roach not so...
Thankfully I do not keep roaches in the house- I have my lizard building, and also thank heavens they have not made their way into the house and have been content to remain in the yard and in the lizard building after several years.
If you have weather milder or similar to mine in the winter, I urge you to not order this species. They are known by exterminating companies to be infestive pests and are illegal in some states now, and that now includes my own recently. A simple google search will confirm this.
There are lots of much better species- I highly recommend dubia for most homes- non-infestive, can't climb smooth surfaces. Lobsters if you must have something prolific and tiny babies for newborn chameleons, but they will hang around in the home a while if any escape...
thephotoprincess
Avid Member
fluxlizard is right on ... they are just awful. and creepy. I was going to use them and they just grossed me out and as I live in an apartment I could not take the chance of escapees.
they look like big cockroaches and have those egg sacs and just losing one of those could lead to an infestation.
dubia are a much better choice.
they look like big cockroaches and have those egg sacs and just losing one of those could lead to an infestation.
dubia are a much better choice.
djfishygillz
Avid Member
dang they seemed so great before. now they just sound like to much. but my damn dubia never breed fast enough and my chams werent that interested. what do you all have to say about lobster roaches?
robmd1
Avid Member
Really? my dibia stay ahead an i have a few chams, turn up the heat...
fluxlizard
Avid Member
Lobsters are my lizards' favorites, hands down. Even for my larger lizards like bearded and water dragons and mellers chameleons. I've no idea why except that maybe they are softer than the dubia. Or maybe lizards actually prefer slightly smaller food items. Maybe they just taste better LOL.
I like them because they are super prolific, hardy, and babies are small enough to feed most baby chameleons.
My experience after using them for many years and producing zillions of them is that they don't establish outdoors like the lateralis did.
They can survive a while indoors, but again I haven't had them establish indoors and become infestive- I think they try to get outside where they are native and then I think they do not survive here like the lateralis do.
I think these things having fed zillions over the past decade here- yet only the lateralis ever became a pest and I had far less lateralis than any other species and actively tried to feed them to extinction, yet I only had problems with the lateralis.
That endorsement said- I have a lizard building and the roaches stay there. We have a few "pet" frogs and lizards that belong to my kids, and I only bring dubia and no lateralis or even hissers into the house to feed the house pets. Personally, climbing roaches like lobsters are beyond my comfort zone in the home, plus lobsters breed very rapidly and will even keep producing in my lizard building when ambient temps are 50-70 in mid winter when most lights are out and lizards are hibernating. The hardiness factor makes me uncomfortable with them in my home because I know they can survive quite a while at cooler temps. But for a safe track record- zillions over 10 years and no problems. But I don't want to see random loose lobsters running across my couch, so only the very tropical dubia which can't climb smooth surfaces are allowed in my home.
Get a bigger tub and hold back more breeders.
Seriously- a 50 gallon rubbermaid storage container filled with paper towel and toilet paper tubes will solve your problems as far as quantity if you only have several chameleons.
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