Feeder colonies living and breeding within bioactive setup?

[livehappy08]

Planning to setup a completely bioactive setup for my veiled in the next month or so with substrate, isopods, springtails, and a good drainage system. Have been looking into ways to offer a greater variety of food within breaking the budget. Dubia not an option. Planning to buy some green banana roaches from Nick Barta here on the forum- but I was wondering if anyone has ever kept their breeding colony INSIDE their enclosure? I'm envisioning the roaches and nymphs living in the substrate at the bottom of the enclosure (with a heating mat underneath, likely).

I mean, talk about wild re-creation...the advantages of a permanent and mostly self-sustaining food source as a part of the chameleons ecosystem are obvious... but is it doable? Has anyone done it?

 

[Andee]

idk.... depends on how you plan to keep you cham etc... Green banana roaches in general need high humidity and unless the chameleon enclosure has unhealthily high levels for the cham (unless you have good air flow and a gentle breeze every now and then). Then you also need to be away they will be able to escape, and are more likely to survive if they are exposed to lower heat and lower humidity levels regularly.

 

[etclement]

Pallid roaches can climb and reproduce very quickly from what I've read. It would be possible to keep feeders living with the cham but I don't really think the amount of work it would take to keep the population steady/ supplement/ gutload is worth not having to open the cage door once in a while.

 

[kinyonga]

I've had crickets set up a colony in several of my lizard and tortoise cages but never in my chameleon cages because I use no substrate in them. If you do that you have to make sure the crickets are fed/gutloaded and then how do you dust them with supplements or make up for it some other way?

 

[JoeDigiorgio]

I can't see it being practical in anything less than some of the very large custom enclosures we see on here an elsewhere online. When we culture bugs for feeding purposes we cater to their needs and provide ideal conditions. Inside a display, conditions may be good enough for reproduction but not at a sustainable rate.

There's also no way to measure what the chameleon is actually getting, or how well your populations are doing. GBRs (and most other roaches) for example, you'd never see the nymphs in such a set up and the adults would likely not be visible to the chameleons at all during the day anyway. Super/mealworms would probably pupate, morph and reproduce in such a set up but never sustain dense populations or be very visible for feeding.

 

[jamest0o0]

is your plan for feeding or cleaning purposes?

 

[jajeanpierre]

Planning to setup a completely bioactive setup for my veiled in the next month or so with substrate, isopods, springtails, and a good drainage system. Have been looking into ways to offer a greater variety of food within breaking the budget. Dubia not an option. Planning to buy some green banana roaches from Nick Barta here on the forum- but I was wondering if anyone has ever kept their breeding colony INSIDE their enclosure? I'm envisioning the roaches and nymphs living in the substrate at the bottom of the enclosure (with a heating mat underneath, likely).

I mean, talk about wild re-creation...the advantages of a permanent and mostly self-sustaining food source as a part of the chameleons ecosystem are obvious... but is it doable? Has anyone done it?

I guess you didn't read my thread on Aflatoxicosis. It is possible the crickets became contaminated from eating decaying vegetation in my heavily planted cages.

www.chameleonforums.com/threads/aflatoxicosis.158656/

 

[livehappy08]

The GBR will be for feeding, primarily.

 

[etclement]

A feeder colony of roaches is a bad idea in a bioactive or any other setup really. For one, part of the reason we gutload is because we want to use the insect as a vessel for the things our cham needs to eat. In other words, you feed your roaches what you would want your chameleons eating. In a chameleon cage, roaches would probably eat Chameleon poop. IMO there are too many variables to control that would all have very bad consequences if not controlled (number of feeders, dusting, gutloading, aflatoxins like @jajeanpierre said and other diseases and parasites etc.).

 

[etclement]

Also, GBR don't make a terribly great staple feeder.

 

[jamest0o0]

I don't understand people at one moment advocating for wild caught bugs, but then it's bad for them to be eating stuff like mold, decaying vegetation, crap, etc in our cages... what do we think there is some sort of magical buffet better than any gutload out in the wild? Ugh lol I won't bring that into this thread though. Sure stuff can happen, because they're living things and sometimes out of our control. That said I 100% agree with @etclement if the purpose is staple feeding you won't be able to gutload and get them the nutrition that we usually strive for. Roaches can also be destructive. How about add some giant canyon isopods, they are a great CuC addition and can be eaten. There's many other cleaners you can go crazy with too, even add morio worms and such. They definitely won't get eaten very often because they'll all be hiding in the dirt, but they can make the occasional snack.