How to I convince my mother?

[JackP308]

Is you're mom constantly going in and out of you're room? If not, just get them! I've bought some and didn't tell my wife and she hasn't notice them at all... She will freak out if she ever find them. I'm also planing on breeding them LOL...

That's awesome! The misses stumbles across a colony of roaches without a clue.

 

[eisentrauti]

It's just a question of how many enclosures you have / how much room you have for the animals ;-) Nobody here would notice if I'd buyed ten more chams, just because I have so many. And nobody would notice it if start to breed Dubias The best is to have extra rooms just for the animals. If your parents/wife/husband dont care for the animals they will probably not visit it that often

 

[ChameleonRave]

You all made very good points! I doubt my mom would make me get rid of my chameleon. I told her they would be beneficial to all my herps. (turtles and leopard gecko and chameleon) I have given her all the pros and cons, i've showed her picture and i had the pet store owner tell her about them. She has lived in texas, california, arizona etc. and everyplace she has seen HUGE cockroaches and she refuses to have them in her house. I honestly see no problem, but i see the problem with them escaping and infesting my house. My friend has small roaches that are throughout his home and i can't stand going there and being around that. I will figure something out. I will do some more research and sit down with my mom and see what she says after i do my research more. (it always works)

 

[Lingling]

I will for sure inform her that they won't survive in our house if i get them and escape. and she doesn't go into that cabinet and she hardly goes into my room. so I think I should be getting some as soon as i get about 25 bucks to get a ficus.

They absolutely WILL survive in your house, they just aren't SUPPOSED to reproduce. These things are nearly impossible to kill - I've tried. They survive through extremely low temperatures, they just go dormant until it warms up. They're extremely resilient.

I bought a starter colony but wasn't able to keep them, for the same reason. My mom absolutely refused to let me keep them in the house, not even feed them to the chams inside. During the summer I can breed them outside and take the chams out to eat. However, when I bought the starter colony, it was too cold to take the chams out, and since the roaches couldn't come inside, I had to get rid of them. I couldn't let them free outside, because you should NEVER release species that aren't native (even if they aren't expected to survive), so I put them in a closed container (not 100% air tight, but they had very little oxygen) in the garage. Temps went down to 30*, and they still wouldn't die. No food, no water, freezing outside and they stayed alive like that for 3 months. We finally had to spray them with insect killer. Sound like something that couldn't survive indoors? Sure, they do need warm temps to reproduce, but they're extremely resilient.

If you mom won't let you breed them inside, maybe you could also keep them over the summer. Depending on where you live, the colony might survive the winter, though they won't reproduce until it warms up.

 

[pssh]

They won't reproduce in such cool temperatures anyways. I find that they don't even really like being indoors. I've also heard they will attempt to get outside if they are loose.

And who cares if a few dubia are sitting around like the little stupid flat things they are? It's not like they do anything really. And the fact that females are not parthenogenic reproducers (unless I'm wrong) means that you would need a male and female to be in your home, mate, then the female has to have optimal temperatures and food/water. In lower temperatures, if it's warm enough to even incubate them in her, it will take forever for them to develop! So when you take the incubation period into consideration, that also means that they would take a very long time to become adults. AND I find escaped dubia caught in spider webs in my house along with crickets.

I think the likelyhood of dubia even coming close to 'infesting' your home is extremely small unless your home is 80+ degrees all year. Just because they can live at low temperatures does not mean they will thrive at low temperatures.

If you're really that worried, set down some glue traps.

 

[ChameleonRave]

Thanks both for the info. I might get some this winter and breed them over summer. i could use them as back up feeders I will talk to my mom more about them for summer. I could put them in a 10 gallon tank with a topper and throw veggies and fruits in as needed and then i can sell them to the pet shop make a quick buck while i do it too maybe ha! making up some ideas, but I would love to get a strong colony going soon. Thanks for all of your help!

 

[Syn]

Hope you figure something out soon, especially after breeding your two chameleons.

Best of luck.

 

[ChameleonRave]

Hope you figure something out soon, especially after breeding your two chameleons.

Best of luck.

the breeding didn't work. NEVER EVER doing that again! it was too much stress D: and I think my mom went out of town to stock up on supplies for the chameleons! Thanks for the luck!