Dubia roach colony going downhill quickly

[Salzy]

I'm not sure what the reason is behind my colonies decline, but I am easily losing 100 adult roaches per week all of a sudden. All this past season they were breeding extremely well and I was selling off the nymphs and extra adults that were overcrowding the colony. Now, I can't seem to keep them alive.

My care hasn't changed whatsoever...they are still on the same heat and diet. The only thing that has happened is that I've had an uncontrolable outbreak of fruit flies for some reason. That is the only thing that I can think of that is decimating my roaches. I have no other explanation.

I'm looking for your help or insight if you have any. Before long, there will be nothing left and I'll have to raise up the few nymphs that the adults actually are producing yet. Is there some type of disease that they can get? Is it the fruit flies causing the problems? I'm thinking I may have to just kill off the rest of the colony, toss the bin that I've had them in, and start over. Is there any saving them?

 

[Ozymandias]

i would try separating out the adult in multiple different encloser to quarantine them. then i would cleaning out the old bin or getting a new bin. also ask you're question over at Roach Forum there are some people smart guys over her they might be able to answer you

 

[Salzy]

I'll have to try separating them out and see what happens...maybe divide the remaining colony 3 ways and hope for the best. :?

I just signed up at that roach forum too. Thanks for mentioning it! I'll ask them the same thing and see what they know.

 

[Ozymandias]

thats probably the best thing to do i think, and be warned the roach forum is small but there are some really smart people there but it might take some time for youre question to be answered

 

[Salzy]

I'll be honest and say that I didn't know it even existed. :blushing: Any help that anyone can provide will be greatly appreciated right now.

 

[Lordoftheswarms]

Redundancy would save you a lot of worry. When I get roaches, they will be in two separate rooms, in several tubs in racks.

 

[Salzy]

Redundancy would save you a lot of worry.

Are you saying that as backup, that you would always have dual colonies so in case one crashes that the other will hopefully be okay? Do most people do this?

 

[Ozymandias]

i would think it wouldn't be a bad practice that way if you feed a little to heavily from one colony you can just switch to another. personally thought i just have three species of feeder roaches i use so i never have to worry about over feeding from one colony.

I'll be honest and say that I didn't know it even existed. :blushing: Any help that anyone can provide will be greatly appreciated right now.

i think it's one of the only forums dedicated to the roach hobby that is still active there actually what got me into the roach hobby.

 

[meisen]

Are you using a thermostat controlled heater or just a pad? If its a pad, perhaps it got cooler since its just putting out a constant amount of heat. The effective heat of the enclosure is going to drop. I see reduced production in my colonies for the same reason though it works out as many of my animals are going into brumination soon.

Have you increased feeding the system? Its amazing once a colony is going how much more the food demand increases. I can feed several pieces of stale bread, a banana or two and some oranges and its all gone in thirty minutes from my larger colonies!!! I realize its obvious but food demand in a growing colony will increase almost exponentially. 100 dead adults seems like a lot to die of starvation though. There are a few roaches in my ackie cage that managed to get behind the background....still alive after 6 months with no food and no water AFAIK.

Winter is a lot drier for us Wisconsonites, are you providing extra moisture (cricket water) at all times?

Any pesticide spraying or chemicals you used recently that could be the culprit? Any chance your roach food is contaminated?

Are you sure they are fruit flys and not the carrion flys? Could be getting into freshly molted animals or something and/or laying eggs though admittedly not really likely. Probably just eating the dead ones.

What are the dead roaches like? Smelly? Dry?

I noticed a few of my colonies lost a few individuals here and there when the temps changed. Some just get old and die and if you have a group that started at the same age, that could be happening too.

 

[Salzy]

I have two separate pads on them up on a shelf in the closet...one is a pet bed heater underneath, and the other is one for therapeutic applications (sore neck, shoulder, etc.) on the backside of the bin. It raises the temp anywhere between 102 and 104.

I always feed them a ton of food and they clean it up quickly...always a good supply of dog and cat food, along with apples, celery, lettuce, potatoes, and all sorts of other fruits and veggies almost every day. They also get old dried up CGD. I never used to give water crystals, and they did fine for 3 years and then all of a sudden started dying on me. I don't think it's a moisture issue.

I haven't used any cleaners or anything in the room (it's my gecko room also, so nothing detrimental gets used in there) and I don't think the dog food could be contaminated. I don't even use bleach or anything to clean the roach bin when I do a full cleaning.

I've been told that they are a phorid fly. I call them all fruit flies...I don't care what species they are so long as I can get rid of them. Maggots are always in the dead roaches because of them, and they smell quite horrible. They seem to get mushy and fall apart, probably because of the larvae tearing at them.

What I've noticed is that the huge majority of the dead ones are full adults...half the colony is large nymphs, yet not many of them seem to die. This has led me to believe that it is an issue with the age class of the roaches and that they are just naturally dying off on me.

I've started to be very diligent with cleaning the roach bins and removing dead roaches as soon as I see them. I also split the colony a couple different ways and I'm keeping all the nymphs and the freshly molted adults in a bin together. Any of the older adults I have separated, and I'm noticing that they are dying off faster than the rest...leading me to believe that they are just old and dying naturally, which has probably led to this whole issue to begin with.

I have noticed a few things though that are probably just coincidences with when the roaches started to crash. I'm not sure if anyone has an explanation for these observations or not.

1. I fed the roaches a browning banana and the flies showed up. Shortly after that the roaches started dying off
2. I fed them half a bag of uneaten spinach leaves - I have not fed any spinach since then
3. I started using water crystals just a couple weeks before the crash - contaminated crystals maybe?

Nothing else changed as far as I can remember.

Sorry for the long-winded post, but I thought I would lay it all out there for you guys to evaluate.

This is the first problem I've had with them in 4 years, so it has me kind of distraught since I can't exactly find anything that I did wrong. They were breeding like crazy before, to the point that I was freezing off extra males and selling thousands of nymphs and some adults.

Thanks for the posts and tips so far guys. Anything else you can think of...please share.

 

[JonDL]

Hey, how moist was/is it getting in the container(s)? Ive had a similar problem when my container was staying too moist and also lacked really good ventilation. Also, are you using substrate? I found it best to not use substrate and started feeding my colonies mostly oats, (green) bananas just enough for them to finish that day, skinned carrots, squash, and on occasions greens (because the greens would wither and they seemed to not want them as much). But I found that feeding them less mooshy stuff and more oats really kept their poo solid, I used no substrate (made it easier to clean even), made sure there was plenty of ventilation, and decreased my male ratio from 1:3 to 1:6 (females). After all that there were only deaths of the old roaches and babies I would accidently smoosh moving the cartons lol.

It just honestly sounds like you are giving them too much of a "moist" diet and not enough of a dry diet (even catfood and dog food is usually made greesey). Natural is always best. Try not using the greens, apples, and bananas as much (and potatoes because that will attract phorid flies like no other) and go more for oatmeal, carrots, and sliced up squash and do fruit on occasion. I just dump the oatmeal dry in the container and it seems to keep them balanced.

-Jon DeLong