Best Roaches?

[BlakeDeffenbaugh]

I'm wanting to start breeding/feeding my Tokays roaches as well as crickets. I'm wanting to find out what are some good bigger roaches that dont climb glass or the rubber-made tubs they will be kept in. Also wheres a good like "care" sheet or website for them?

Thanks,

 

[feedersinc]

*Old post but information for incase someone searches for this data.

Dubia are great roaches, very meaty, dont climb/fly/smell. They breed slower but in all are the best overall roach!

 

[geckoling]

I would say lobsters are the best overall roach and the closest to replacing crickets.

 

[GCS Reptiles]

Blatta lateralis and/or Blaptica dubia would be the best options. Lobsters smell, fly and can climb anything.

 

[geckoling]

dubia breed slowly, and are only useful if you have something that will eat the fully grown adults which are too big for a lot of things.

Blatta lateralis are excellent, but they lay eggcases and thus require more work. A little trickier to keep going compared to lobsters.

My lobster cultures don't smell much compared to the other two species and a vaseline barrier keeps them in check. I've never known them to fly. Although lateralis is preferable if you are feeding smaller geckos(babies a little bigger than fruitflies), the lobster is a very close replacement to petstore size crickets, from .25 inch up to those fat adult females.

 

[jabberwock486]

Blatta lateralis and/or Blaptica dubia would be the best options. Lobsters smell, fly and can climb anything.

i agree on the climbing bit, but i have never seen mine fly and i certainly never had them stink.


i have gotten rid of them mainly because they hid too much. the only animals that ate them well were forest floor type animals. skinks loved them as did my chameleon. however they tended to hide most of the time. however roaches of any species are great cage cleaners. what was left of the lobsters were released into my tokay and crested gecko setups. however on cleaning the crested tank i found they had eliminated all of the roaches. the tokays will eat them but the prefer the crickets and super worms.

i will be getting a smaller non-climbing species if i get back into chameleons.

 

[feedersinc]

lobsters do have a smell to them, but once you get use to it you never think about it.

 

[geckoling]

I actually think lateralis smell worse. I had a group of baby lats and they had this smell that reminded me of being in a very dusty room. I cleaned out my nose well after dealing with them. Once in a larger tank with substrate of lobster droppings they did ok.

Their really is no best one, but rather different roaches for different needs. Has anyone put the species together successfully? I had a large culture of lobsters with lateralis and dubia contaminants. The lobsters were obviously dominant and grew/bred much faster.

Lobsters are great escape artists though. Keeping them in the roach bin is simple enough. What happens to the ones your gecko does not eat right away is not always so simple. Same goes for lats...dubia would rather burrow than escape IME.

 

[feedersinc]

substrate holds the smell which imo makes the smell 10x worse!