I use a bagless clean from Bissell since my tank is only 20 gallon glass with 112 females n 38 males in there currently,when I collect all the roach babies every weeks or sooner,I vacuum all the waste out,and this really take me about 30 min or longer,if I can eliminate this cleaning process ,then I can spend more time on my other pets.
For people who breed dubias (or others)
- Thread starter CandyCham
- Start date
CandyCham
Member
ah, see I have a shop vac and I use it for similar purposes but I never thought about using it to clean bug waste! I have been tipping the dubia bin so everything goes to one side and then I chase/ scare the healthy dubias onto the other side and then scoop them up and put them in temporary bin and just dump everything in the trash bin and spot clean it/ or thoroughly clean it depending. But vacuuming, I like that idea.
trickedoutbiker
Avid Member
I've never had a problem with mold. Like, ever. I never spray my colony's tub with water like some people do. The only moisture that goes in with my roaches is the moisture that is in the fresh fruits, vegetables, and leafy greens that I give them. I change out their wet food every two days but more times than not, the food is already gone within 24 hours of me putting it in the tub. Nothing has time to mold that way and since I put the wet food quite a few inches away from my egg crates, inside of a little cup with walls to help keep it contained, then none of it ever really gets dragged around the tub into places I don't want it to be. My colony breeds great without any additional provided humidity from elsewhere.
I change egg crates out as needed when they start to look a little shabby, which is about every couple months. Never had mold on them either. The only thing in the tubs that may provide moisture where I don't want it is any moisture from roach frass, which in my experience, is never really that wet to begin with anyways. I clean it out about every month if there is a lot of it and sometimes every two months if there isn't too much. It's okay to let it build up just a bit because it's actually good for the baby roaches, as they hide in it and even eat on it some. Never had a problem with mold yet though (knocks on wood). Only thing I have to make sure I do is peer down into the tubs and wiggle some egg crates around about every week to see if there are dead roaches down in there. I take them out as I see them.
With a cleaner crew, I wouldn't have to worry about dead roach caracasses, and if I got lesser mealworm beetles as part of my crew, they are notoriously great for eating frass because they live in poo lots of the times in the wild and love to devour it. So with the right combo, my cleaning would be kept to a minimum.
There's absolutely no way I will get the Dermestid beetles though. As much as I love the performance they are able to give and the great efficiency they have at doing what they do, there is no way I want things flying out at me when I take the lid off of the tub. I wouldn't like that much, nor would my girlfriend when she sees bugs flying around the house. She already doesn't like the fact that I keep roaches to begin with and it took a lot of convincing and a couple arguments to get her to even be okay with that. Sure as heck don't want to ruin a good thing by letting bugs out flying around the house. I don't want to play Mr. Bug Catcher every time I open my tub.
Next best option? I know there are lots of choices out there, and I've probably read about all of them. I just want opinions from people who have actual experience in using the different crews though. A website trying to sell them can tell you all sorts of info about them, but the real info comes from people who have actually tried them out.
Cool,the only thing I see here is collecting the babies,they can be everywhere even mix with the poop,the question I have is those tiny babies are so fragile,and I need to collect them all for the feeding purposes,I used to have 4 tanks going at once when I have more panther babies,now I cut them down to one,and its pain in my butt to collect those tiny babies inside the tank,first I have to take the egg crates out and shake them all of into another bucket or the other 20 gallon tank then there are still tons baby roaches running around on the bottom of the glass tank with poop mix in with them,Sometimes I use a plastic spoon to scoop them out one by one and this is taking more time from me,Im trying to think a new way to getting these babies quickly without hurting them,maybe move them to a plastic bin like Nick barta said since its easy to pick the plastic bin up without breaking the plastic bin tub instead of solid glass (thats the reason I use a plastic spoon in the first place,I dont mind to pick the glass tank up since they are still very light weight to me,but I dont want to damage the glass tank just in case)
I have separately housed Peanut Beetles, Lesser Mealworm Beetles, and Buffalo Beetles for my use and to sell. The Peanut Beetles seemed to seem a bit harder to keep a high production rates, not sure if that was just my perception or reality. They all do the job well with no climbing/flying issues, so I have combined all of them in all my Roach bins, and sell them as a mixed group now. They all really produce highly in my GBR bins where the coco fiber is constantly moist.
CHEERS!
Nick
CHEERS!
Nick
trickedoutbiker
Avid Member
How I get all my little babies out is pretty simple in my opinion. It takes like 5 minutes. I first take all my egg crates out of my colony tub and move them to another temporary holding tub. This leaves me with nothing but the frass at the bottom of the first tub, with a bunch of baby roaches running around in it and some big ones here and there. I grab all of the bigger ones up by hand and place them into the second tub where my egg crates are chilling for the moment.
Now, for the itty bitty babies. I have a plastic Tupperware container that I bought and I cut out most of the lid and replaced it with a giant sheet of plastic canvas, the stuff they use to make all sorts of neat crafts with (as seen in my hyperlinks). The sheets are very cheap, a couple dollars at most at a local craft store. Put the modified lid onto the rest of the Tupperware container, and lets' begin.
I take the frass remaining in my roach colony and pour it over the lid of the Tupperware container. The holes in the plastic canvas are pretty small, but they are large enough to allow 95% of your frass to fall through into your Tupperware container. The baby roaches are too big to fall through the holes in the plastic canvas, so they stay on top while most of your frass falls into the Tupperware container below.
This leaves all your baby roaches on the lid of the container with a few pieces of frass here and there. Take that lid, and dump all those babies and very few pieces of remaining frass into the container where the egg crates and the big roaches are being held temporarily. Do this over and over. It takes about 5 minutes for me to do a whole colony that way. I dump as much frass as I can onto the lid of the Tupperware, shake the Tupperware a tad to allow the frass to sift through to the bottom, then I dump the remaining roaches and bit of frass into the holding tub. I do this until all frass has been sifted through, which will leave my original roach colony tub all bare bottom. I wipe it down with water and soap, then rinse a few times and hand dry. I never use chemicals on it because I don't want any residue leftover to harm my roaches. The cleaning with soap does just fine.
After original colony tub is clean and dry, I dump all the roaches from the 2nd bin back into their original colony tub.
Voila. Easy as pie and pretty simple to do. No complicated sorting bins or anything. Just a simple Tupperware container and a big cheap piece of plastic canvas, and some hot glue to modify it all.
CandyCham
Member
I haven't had to deal with babies yes as this is why I made the thread. How small are the babies? Are they small enough to feed to baby chameleons? For some reason I thought people only fed the flightless fruit flies and pinheads. I can see this being a problem, separating like you said. I've used spoons before to pick out the poo and what not as well but never had to deal with babies yet. I'm curious now... Something I sure didn't foresee.
ZacharyLeesWife
Avid Member
marley patches
Member
i have bought a total of 200 in the past 2 months , all females so far grrrrrrr
That is some great info to know,thanks for sharing.
CandyCham
Member
AHH yes lol!
I saw something similar on YouTube,but they use 3 type of bucket with different size hole lid,but u answer the babies roaches part in details and thats what I need ,thanka for sharing.How I get all my little babies out is pretty simple in my opinion. It takes like 5 minutes. I first take all my egg crates out of my colony tub and move them to another temporary holding tub. This leaves me with nothing but the frass at the bottom of the first tub, with a bunch of baby roaches running around in it and some big ones here and there. I grab all of the bigger ones up by hand and place them into the second tub where my egg crates are chilling for the moment.
Now, for the itty bitty babies. I have a plastic Tupperware container that I bought and I cut out most of the lid and replaced it with a giant sheet of plastic canvas, the stuff they use to make all sorts of neat crafts with (as seen in my hyperlinks). The sheets are very cheap, a couple dollars at most at a local craft store. Put the modified lid onto the rest of the Tupperware container, and lets' begin.
I take the frass remaining in my roach colony and pour it over the lid of the Tupperware container. The holes in the plastic canvas are pretty small, but they are large enough to allow 95% of your frass to fall through into your Tupperware container. The baby roaches are too big to fall through the holes in the plastic canvas, so they stay on top while most of your frass falls into the Tupperware container below.
This leaves all your baby roaches on the lid of the container with a few pieces of frass here and there. Take that lid, and dump all those babies and very few pieces of remaining frass into the container where the egg crates and the big roaches are being held temporarily. Do this over and over. It takes about 5 minutes for me to do a whole colony that way. I dump as much frass as I can onto the lid of the Tupperware, shake the Tupperware a tad to allow the frass to sift through to the bottom, then I dump the remaining roaches and bit of frass into the holding tub. I do this until all frass has been sifted through, which will leave my original roach colony tub all bare bottom. I wipe it down with water and soap, then rinse a few times and hand dry. I never use chemicals on it because I don't want any residue leftover to harm my roaches. The cleaning with soap does just fine.
After original colony tub is clean and dry, I dump all the roaches from the 2nd bin back into their original colony tub.
Voila. Easy as pie and pretty simple to do. No complicated sorting bins or anything. Just a simple Tupperware container and a big cheap piece of plastic canvas, and some hot glue to modify it all.
Thats exactly what I saw,but we might need to separate the beetles with the 4th bucket,lol
Some of the baby roach is small usually from the smaller size of the females produce them.
I feed my new born baby panther in between pinhead to 1 week old,the newborn roaches will still be bit bigger for the new born
Usually when the baby panther about 2month old thats when I introduced my new born baby roaches to them,it will have to be persistent to leave the roach for them to see since they tend to like the baby crickets more.
trickedoutbiker
Avid Member
The bucket video above is a good way to sort different sizes of Dubia out, but if you want to sort out roaches from the actual frass, then the way I explained works flawlessly. And when the frass falls into your Tupperware container, you can discard it all easily, or, do as I do, and keep it and use it to mix in with soil when planting plants in your chameleon cages or anywhere you want to plant something really. Frass makes absolutely wonderful fertilizer and stimulates root growth because it gives beneficial bacteria to plant roots.
I see that its a great idea,but now we need to find out how u separate the cleaning crew with the baby roaches since they all going to be in the same place,and also do u think the cleaning crew will start eating the baby roaches when they always looking for food to eat??The bucket video above is a good way to sort different sizes of Dubia out, but if you want to sort out roaches from the actual frass, then the way I explained works flawlessly. And when the frass falls into your Tupperware container, you can discard it all easily, or, do as I do, and keep it and use it to mix in with soil when planting plants in your chameleon cages or anywhere you want to plant something really. Frass makes absolutely wonderful fertilizer and stimulates root growth because it gives beneficial bacteria to plant roots.
In order to get all the suggestion above,the first thing I need to replace is the plastic bin part since I had roaches inside the glass tank doing their orgy for the longest time,as matter of fact,Im cleaning the tank right now as I write this,its pain in my butt but I got to do this before the daily routine gets a "bug mess"
This is the baby roach on a plastic tea spoon,as u can see its bigger than the pinhead cricket.
CandyCham
Member
Yeah, I've never seen them any smaller than that but at the same time I've never seen that as new babies either!
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