Death's head

Astigma · Posted: Fri Sep 30, 2005 6:27 pm Post subject: Death's head

any one know anything about them i was thinking of breeding them

Slizarus · Posted: Fri Sep 30, 2005 6:51 pm Post subject:

I know... too much about them

Death heads
Blaberus Craniifer
Max size 3 1/2" (maybe)
They're a wide, heavy bodied (In comparison to even Discoid roaches)
roach, live bearing.
Mature females lay an oothecae a month after fertilization which commonly produce 30 white babies in the manner of an hour or two.
From birth to final molt, the time taken ranges depending on their food, condition, and overall temp of the enclosure.
For example, I got mine in march, the oldest litter is maybe 2 molts away from winged adult hood, and that's without a constant heat source.. I imagine you could shorten it to 4 months if you keep them running at 85 degrees constantly.
You can keep about 200 adults to a 10 gallon, they actually seem to thrive under crowded conditions.

They're a Real cool looking roach, be sure to purchase them from
Blaberus.com, they have the only truely pure stock of this roach, all the others are Hybrids, of course, you could try other places.. but either way, If I were to spend over $3 for a roach, I'd want to know I'm getting the real thing.
However, unless you have your heart set on Death Heads for the look (As I am), you can get a Hybrid with just as much success.. Or another species you could look for is Fusca the Dwarf Cave Roach, they're not as heavy.. but they're more common and cheaper.

Just a note on foods: Anything under the sun.. they'll even eat rotting foods.. I wouldn't reccomend it, but it's possible. They'll eat each other for protein. Be sure to get a protein heavy dog food so they don't bite each other's wings. I feed them all carrots.. lots and lots of carrots.. it's a source of water and food, so it's the best I can do.

As for decorations to the cage? Nothing is fine, but an egg flat (several of them is better) will do you good, allowing them places to hide, breed, and dry their wings (Otherwise their wings will wrinkle)

Behavior: Calm when picked up, they don't fly, they don't climb glass, Adults can burrow, but it's the nymphs that burrow the most often... it's rare to find them out in the open.

This care.. and all details except the Size of the roach can be used for all Blaberus species.

Night night.. *exhausted sigh* zzzzzzzzzzzz

MO · Posted: Sat Oct 01, 2005 2:50 pm Post subject:

I just ordered a bunch of dubias and hissers from blaberus. I'm going to keep them in an 18 gallon.

For food do you recommend dry dog fod or wet dog food for the protein source?

I only ordered 10 of the hissers and will keep them ina 10 gallon until they start breeding.

I'm trying to get away from the whole cricket thing. I have a juvie beardie now and will be getting a hatchling tegu next season so I want to be prepared for that.

Wish me luck and any helpful tips on raising roaches would be appreciated.

Monique

Slizarus · Posted: Sun Oct 02, 2005 1:42 am Post subject:

Dry dog food is fine, They're quite strong enough to chew through a seemingly hard thing as dog food... And if I'm incorrect, I know for a fact they can eat carrot without a problem at any age.. from newborns to adults.

You could try wet dog food.. but it'd just be impractical and costly.. they won't derive any benefit from it as far as I could see.

However, remember to purchase some gut load of a sort.. many people sell roach food online.. that rep place.. I was talking about in another post sells it on Kingsnake in the Invertebrate classifieds.. It's a good source of pretty much everything and will provide a great deal of nutrients onto your herps.

A helpful edit:

For hissers... as you know, they do climb glass... I reccomend highly a jar setup for them, A large 2 gallon jar, for the lid, staple hardware mesh to the ring and screw it on nice and tight... get a very small holed (my vocab fails me at 4 am) mesh.. because despite the size of the adults. the babies are very small and if they escape, they will plague you for months on end (I speak from personal experience.. my first 5 litters mostly escaped.. they seem to have little trouble traversing vaseline where it's thin)
Set down a bit of red oat bran on the bottom (You can use different things)
and a small dish for carrots/wet foods and ring vaseline around the top, about 2" wide.

The jars are better than cages for hissers IMO.. the end is small.. things are easy to observe.. when your population gets huge.. just sort out 10 adult males per 40 females into extra jars.. you can keep maybe 100 adults in each jar mixed with a few hundred nymphs.

Just work with what you can and use your best judgement.. if you have a surplus, feed off the males... too many of them only causes problems anyways.. Hissers like to establish a male hierarchy, and will exile other males to different places.. or just outright kill them when they deem it necessary.

As far as the Dubia... send me some when you have a surplus!

I'll trade ya hehe.
Just treat them like Blaberus sp. the care is identical really and sexing is as easy as Hissers.. Females have no wings on Dubia.. and Hisser females have no horns.

Best of luck

MO · Posted: Sun Oct 02, 2005 9:20 am Post subject:

CLEAR 2 gallon jars? Are you serious? I don't want to see them, AGH!!!!

I'm getting them on Tuesday or Wed. How long before these guys start breeding? the hissers and the dubias? Do I have to put a heat pad under them?

I'm putting the dubias in an 18 gall rubbermaid with a screen top. I was going to keep the hissers in a rubbermaid screen top too but now I'm scared! Escapeeees, what the heck! Noooooo

I'm getting the hissers from James over at blaberus and I also bought some of his roach food, yuck.

I can not beleive I'm doing this!

Everyone keeps saying I'll be overrun with roaches, do you really think so? Well, I'm sure when my baby tegu gets here He'll take care of that, pronto!

Thanks for the words of wisdom. Now I have to locate some glass jars.

Monique

Rick · Posted: Sun Oct 02, 2005 11:53 am Post subject:

MO · Posted: Sun Oct 02, 2005 3:33 pm Post subject:

Thanks Rick.

I did tell him I'm from the site and he's gonna add a few extra

As you can see I'm preparing for my Tegu I'll be getting from you, hopefully, next season!

By the time next season arrives I'll have a million roaches to fatten the little tike up with! Yipee!!!

Slizarus · Posted: Sun Oct 02, 2005 4:33 pm Post subject:

Aye, the vaseline will do it all for you.. my escapees were caused more by the fact that in bakersfield with 105 temps outside and not much cooler inside, the vaseline melted and some parts of it thinned to the point that babies got out and I didn't notice for a long while.

As far as infestations.. Rick is right.. hell, it's almost verbatim off of any number of sites about it. The Live bearers just grow to slow, special needs, and the stress of carrying young for a month.. they'll die long before you have any problems with them.

Dubia should indeed mature within a few months.. Hissers will take significantly longer.

I didn't know you had such a fear of roaches

Improvise as you wish, but if you're really worried about things, invest in Bugstop which you can purchase in Kingsnake Classifieds for a few $$... that stuff lasts longer than Vaseline.. and it's not nearly as messy.. plus it's even better than Vaseline.. which is something that I've seen roaches traverse if they're really dedicated to the task (scared for example) even at it's thickest.

Oh well

MO · Posted: Sun Oct 02, 2005 8:04 pm Post subject:

I'M NOT SCARED

!!!!!

Just kidding....... I'm not scared I just don't like the thought of bugs hanging out on the loose in my house while I sleep.....

. I'm a girl, we typically don't like creepy crawlies.

Slizarus · Posted: Wed Oct 05, 2005 12:41 pm Post subject: