anything but roaches

THECHAMMAN

THECHAMMAN

Established Member
hi! i was going to start a colony of roaches but when my parents caught wind of it they cancelled my order for them.



now i have to find a feeder insect that is prolific and doesnt need anything really special to raise. also can you give me the information on the insect.

plzzzz i cant pay 100 dollars a month on crickets.


the only reason i cant have roaches is because my mother is from louisiana and when i say "roach" she thinks of the tiny little german cockroaches that infest houses.
 
how about silk worms? you can order the eggs and hatch them out. they are silent, don't smell (the food does tho when you cook it) and don't move much - they stay where the food is and just eat, eat, eat. look at coastalsilkworms, they are in fl. you will have to offer a variety of food anyway - so maybe you could supplement w/the expensive crix but have silks as your staple.

im in fl and i hate roaches too. :mad:
 
After just receiving my blaptica dubia, I WISH they were like the little German Roaches! They're more like the giant American Roaches! They're absolutely hideous, huge, and disgusting! I wish I lived with my mother and she cancelled my order! lol ... whatever, anything for my chameleons~
 
desultadox said:
They're absolutely hideous, huge, and disgusting! I wish I lived with my mother and she cancelled my order! lol ... whatever, anything for my chameleons~
Click to expand...
I don't believe you find them disgusting. I love my Dubias. Sometimes too much, and I struggle to feed them off to my chams! :)
For insects, they're actually pretty cute. And they lead such social lives.
If you watch your crickets it pretty much always looks like it's every man for themselves. Whereas with the dubias they run around in little family groups, with scores of babies following the adult females around, and the adult females clustering around their chosen adult males. As I said, it's almost heart-breaking to feed them to the chams...

To the OP: your parents are making a big mistake. Roaches are so much cleaner, so much quieter, breed more easily and smell much better than crickets. Not all chams will accept them as feeders though, but for those that do, they're 100x better than keeping crickets...

Now houseflies are something I would be worried about rather than roaches. It's true that they are great enrichment feeders, but if you ever let a load of those get out, they can easily to make your house their new breeding ground...

Silkworms are great feeders too, but you said you didn't want something that needed anything special to raise. Well silkworms need lots of silkworm chow or fresh mulberry leaves.

Have you tried superworms? They can be used as staple feeders (although they are more fatty than crickets, so I would rather use them as a balanced alternative to crickets, rather than replacing the crickets completely), and they can be bred successfully at home without any particularly special setups (just lots of patience).
 
I've always been terrified of cockroaches and the only reason I ordered dubias was because I thought they were smaller and less scary! Well when I opened the box, the very first roach I saw was the one adult male and I almost fell over! The smaller ones don't really bother me too much and even the adult female isn't that intimidating... it's something about those big dark wings... yuck. They do seem pretty social... every time I flip an egg flat I see like 20 of them bundled together. Good thing too, because that's the only way I can get them into the feeder cups; I shake that flat into the cup... they don't crawl up into the tube I used to catch my crickets in (yeah, I won't really touch either of them lol). I never really see the roaches move though... it doesn't even look like they've been eating or drinking (cricket gut load, cricket quencher). My chameleons were skeptical of the roaches at first, probably because they just huddle up and don't move much, but once I shook the cup and knocked some upside down, they couldn't resist those struggling legs! Hopefully it's something I'll get used to, because the silence and lack of smell are a big improvement over crickets.
 
i love dubias bec my friend has them for his tegu but my parents wont let me have them.
i told them that they were cleaner, made no noise, couldnt jump, were slower, and couldnt climb the walls. but i still couldnt sway them
 
i read the site and i say thanks.

but, i still have some questions about the moths.

do the moths fly, can i feed them to my cham, and how do i clean their enclosure.
can you give me some info on the worms and moths based upon your expirence with them.
 
Last edited:
You should see my orange heads you can saddle them and go to town. I feed off the ones that are a perfect size for what ever im feeding.
 
roaches are out of the picture i think i should get silkies but i think they are a lil bit complicated
 
Ive had terrible luck breeding Silkies and have heard others had the same issues.

Superworms are next to the easiest staple for me next to roaches. Very little maintenance and easy to breed.
 
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