Has anyone ever heard of Lobster Roaches?
- Thread starter ChamAllen
- Start date
fluxlizard
Avid Member
They are excellent feeders for chams. They are very soft bodied and meaty and have a high moisture content (I guess- personal observation, not nutritional analysis- but they seem "juicy" compared to dubia) and my chams prefer them over dubia or other roaches. They are also super easy to breed, mature quickly and are very prolific. And they eat anything and everything so you can gutload a billion ways. They are also smaller than dubia- adults are roughly cricket sized and babies are tiny enough to be fed to baby chameleons. I could not have bred and kept all the many lizards I have the last 10 years without lobster roaches.
But they have a couple of serious downsides-
They can climb any smooth surface. Being dusted with calcium will slow them down on smooth surface climbing for a few minutes after dusting, but any not eaten immediately can and will crawl out of food bowls, etc. - and some individuals seem unaffected by dusting and can still climb. They must be contained in their breeding tubs with vasoline. They can get through very tight spaces- cage doors that do not absolutely seal will allow them through. Babies can crawl right through reptarium mesh.
They are also very hardy. They will slow down on breeding but continue breeding even at very cool room temperatures. This means if they escape into your home, the cool conditions will not be a barrier to them. In the past my lizard building often reached 50 at nights during the winter months and I never heated my roaches before this year. It was never a problem to find baby lobster roaches when baby chameleons hatched during those months. They can hang around in a home if they escape and survive just fine- sometimes crawling into warm electronic equipment, etc. Their hardiness means they don't need a lot of moisture either. There are many stories of neglected lobster colonies being returned to after months that are still alive and apparently thriving without food or water (other than cannibalism on fellow roaches I suppose).
Fortunately they do not appear to like to infest or remain in homes. Because I have fed out zillions of them each summer in cages near my house, I always have a few sneak indoors in the fall. They never linger- by midwinter they are gone, not to be seen again until next fall. They seem to prefer life outdoors, but outdoors they don't last long here either- I never see them, unlike red racers which do just fine here even in winter.
BUT- because of their hardiness and their ability to climb and escape- I never use this species in my home. That's just me though. This is not a pest species and is not known to infest and establish. It is a forest species from the carribean.
But they have a couple of serious downsides-
They can climb any smooth surface. Being dusted with calcium will slow them down on smooth surface climbing for a few minutes after dusting, but any not eaten immediately can and will crawl out of food bowls, etc. - and some individuals seem unaffected by dusting and can still climb. They must be contained in their breeding tubs with vasoline. They can get through very tight spaces- cage doors that do not absolutely seal will allow them through. Babies can crawl right through reptarium mesh.
They are also very hardy. They will slow down on breeding but continue breeding even at very cool room temperatures. This means if they escape into your home, the cool conditions will not be a barrier to them. In the past my lizard building often reached 50 at nights during the winter months and I never heated my roaches before this year. It was never a problem to find baby lobster roaches when baby chameleons hatched during those months. They can hang around in a home if they escape and survive just fine- sometimes crawling into warm electronic equipment, etc. Their hardiness means they don't need a lot of moisture either. There are many stories of neglected lobster colonies being returned to after months that are still alive and apparently thriving without food or water (other than cannibalism on fellow roaches I suppose).
Fortunately they do not appear to like to infest or remain in homes. Because I have fed out zillions of them each summer in cages near my house, I always have a few sneak indoors in the fall. They never linger- by midwinter they are gone, not to be seen again until next fall. They seem to prefer life outdoors, but outdoors they don't last long here either- I never see them, unlike red racers which do just fine here even in winter.
BUT- because of their hardiness and their ability to climb and escape- I never use this species in my home. That's just me though. This is not a pest species and is not known to infest and establish. It is a forest species from the carribean.
spawn
Member
I agree with most of what Flux said. They are the easiest to breed (easier than Red Runner) of all the colonies I keep. Their biggest downside for me is containing them in an area within the enclosure where they can be seen long enough to be had by the chameleon. They move a lot, which elicits an immediate response even from fussy eaters, but the problem is they move TOO fast. They twitch a lot and are unpredictable, not to mention climb out of most anything unless you use some sort of bug barrier/vaseline as previously mentioned. This can be a tremendous problem for a chameleon that isn't big like a veiled/oustalet, whereas something smaller like a Jackson or younger cham just simply cannot keep up. I put a teflon-based bug barrier on all my pop bottles in my cham enclosures, and I dump 10-15 roaches in there at one feeding in the hopes that my chams pick out 3-4 of them. The rest are beneath the pot of the plant in the cage within a couple hours. I'm thinking of buying a flying gecko or two just to stick in all my enclosures to clean up the loose roaches. This worked with my jacksons' cage, especially since the gecko remains hidden during the day and hunts at night while the chams sleep.
So, in short, I wouldn't recommend these unless you're really set on using a slick cup/bowl to feed out of and have vaseline/bug barrier on-hand, or you have no furnishings in your cages like I do like cork bark or plants that the roaches can hide under because they WILL hide and be a waste. If you have a purely branch-based enclosure it could work great, and the ones that get away you can just stick a piece of fruit/papaya out to get the roaches to come back out, but even that's tough since they will hide in the dark and generally wait until night to come out when the chams are fast asleep.
Red Runners are probably a better bang-for-the-buck. Equally as fast, not prone to burrowing into substrate like lobsters, and appear to be stupid like crickets in that they don't immediately hide when placed into a new enclosure. They can't climb smooth surfaces, and they're even softer bodied. They do not reach the overall size lobsters do, however. Mine would probably breed better if I fixed up their sterlite tub and made it more humid.
So, in short, I wouldn't recommend these unless you're really set on using a slick cup/bowl to feed out of and have vaseline/bug barrier on-hand, or you have no furnishings in your cages like I do like cork bark or plants that the roaches can hide under because they WILL hide and be a waste. If you have a purely branch-based enclosure it could work great, and the ones that get away you can just stick a piece of fruit/papaya out to get the roaches to come back out, but even that's tough since they will hide in the dark and generally wait until night to come out when the chams are fast asleep.
Red Runners are probably a better bang-for-the-buck. Equally as fast, not prone to burrowing into substrate like lobsters, and appear to be stupid like crickets in that they don't immediately hide when placed into a new enclosure. They can't climb smooth surfaces, and they're even softer bodied. They do not reach the overall size lobsters do, however. Mine would probably breed better if I fixed up their sterlite tub and made it more humid.
