Sezny
Member
Hi there!
I work in population health and the rules I apply everyday work very well to keep our feeder healthy and solving an "outbreak".
These rules are very simple but I think it is useful to list and organise them. To illustrate that, I will show how I managed an ascarid outbreak in my hissing roaches breeding box.
Here are the keys to keep in mind:
- Your target is keeping an healthy population. Each individual has almost no value. Only the group matters.
- If one of your breeding box get an health issue, you want to keep the other feeder breedings safe first. Then you will solve the issue.
- Preventing is way easier than treating.
Concretely:
- When you identify a problem, make sure it can not spread to your other boxes: put distance between the sick box and those that are healthy. If it is ascarids, 6 feels should be enough, if it is something bigger that does not fly, put it in an other room. If it flies (fruit flies, beetles, parasitic wasp...) put it as far as you can, an other building is the best and make both of your sick and healthy boxes proof for this invader.
- Never forget that the major spreading agent is yourself. Always start to feed and take care of your healthy boxes and finish by the sick ones.
- If you think there is a problem but are not sure of what it is, take the highest precautions just in case. again, preventing is way easier than treating.
- Do not hesitate to sacrifice some individuals to keep the group healthy.
- Remove every feeder that does not look healthy from the group. Do not feed your chameleon with it. Your cham can not get your feeder's diseases (except if they are poisoned!) but keep in mind they will be less nutritious that an healthy one.
Now let me show you what I experienced with my hissing roaches colony and how I am managing that.
- Early December 2017:
I buy 2 groups of Madagascar hissing roaches (Gromphadorhina portentosa).
During the transfert to the breeding box, I see a couple of ascarids on the roaches from one group. I put both of the group in the same box, thinking the ascarid will not stand the very dry conditions of the box. That was a big mistake, I should have set up the 2 groups separately. Again, separation of healthy and sick groups is the key.
- Early January 2018:
I look at the hissing roaches that just started to produce babies and see that most of them have a dozen of ascarids crawling on their bodies. Because I can not find any ascarid on the walls, egg crates or feed, I am pretty sure they are parasitic. I immediately separate my boxes like that:
1: my hissing roaches box that contains ascarids
2: my crickets box. I just buy them by 1000 without breeding them so I don't know if they are clean from disease or not. I keep them away from my other boxes all the time.
3: My healthy Dubia roaches colony
I was always feeding and taking care of the 3rd box first, then the 2nd and then the 1st.
January and February were very busy so I haven't take care of the ascarid but this very simple method kept the Dubia and crickets clean from ascarids.
Today I had time to get rid of the ascarids. A very good methods for big insects affected by ascarids is to clean them under tap water. I just set up a small "hospital box" with brand new egg crate and started to clean my insects:
I was very careful to not leave a single ascarid. I transferred the clean roaches in the hospital box.
It was easy to wash the roaches but some smaller insects are much harder to wash. If every insect is a pain to wash, do not hesitate to wash only five or 6 and transfer them to the clean box.
Feed your cham with the rest of the colony.
What is important here is to make sure your clean insects are actually very clean. They will reproduce again. Don't rush, take your time. Keep in mind that a single contaminated insect put in the clean box can ruin all of your efforts.
The washing process is quite harmful for the roaches, I think they suck a lots of water while they are trying to hiss. But I was merciless, loosing a couple of insects to save the crowd is not a big deal.
I have lost 2 in the process:
I took advantage of that to do a very careful inspection of the dead bodies. I found 1 ascarid. I know now that my washing was not 100% efficient. I am going to set up an other hospital box and renew the process tomorrow. Then, I will keep the roaches for two weeks like that and check if the ascarid are not coming back. If they are not, I will put them back in the box.
Cleaning the box:
Now, the box contains only the babies, that were too small to be washed, and the soiled egg crates.
I will transfer the babies in a smaller box and let them grow to see if they shed ascarids.
The best thing to do would be to throw away all of the egg crates and cups from the box, clean the box 2 or three times with dish soap and hot water (dish soap is very efficient to kill small arthropods) and set it up with new egg crate.
But I am running out of egg crates so I will put the egg crates at 300°F for 10 min in the oven. No ascarid or eggs will survive. I like it better than microwave as the heat is more homogeneous. Keep a very close eye on your crates during that operation, you can set your place on fire. It is your responsibility to try it!
I will keep posting to tell you if that was a success but I managed to get rid of ascarids many times with that method.
As you see, all of the rules are very basic and easy but because we are in a rush everyday we all do the same mistakes. As you have seen here, I managed to keep my other boxes clean and will probably get a clean breeding box full of healthy hissing roaches.
I hope that was helpful and interesting for you guys, please ask me if you have any questions about that or regarding other health issues in your feeders.
I work in population health and the rules I apply everyday work very well to keep our feeder healthy and solving an "outbreak".
These rules are very simple but I think it is useful to list and organise them. To illustrate that, I will show how I managed an ascarid outbreak in my hissing roaches breeding box.
Here are the keys to keep in mind:
- Your target is keeping an healthy population. Each individual has almost no value. Only the group matters.
- If one of your breeding box get an health issue, you want to keep the other feeder breedings safe first. Then you will solve the issue.
- Preventing is way easier than treating.
Concretely:
- When you identify a problem, make sure it can not spread to your other boxes: put distance between the sick box and those that are healthy. If it is ascarids, 6 feels should be enough, if it is something bigger that does not fly, put it in an other room. If it flies (fruit flies, beetles, parasitic wasp...) put it as far as you can, an other building is the best and make both of your sick and healthy boxes proof for this invader.
- Never forget that the major spreading agent is yourself. Always start to feed and take care of your healthy boxes and finish by the sick ones.
- If you think there is a problem but are not sure of what it is, take the highest precautions just in case. again, preventing is way easier than treating.
- Do not hesitate to sacrifice some individuals to keep the group healthy.
- Remove every feeder that does not look healthy from the group. Do not feed your chameleon with it. Your cham can not get your feeder's diseases (except if they are poisoned!) but keep in mind they will be less nutritious that an healthy one.
Now let me show you what I experienced with my hissing roaches colony and how I am managing that.
- Early December 2017:
I buy 2 groups of Madagascar hissing roaches (Gromphadorhina portentosa).
During the transfert to the breeding box, I see a couple of ascarids on the roaches from one group. I put both of the group in the same box, thinking the ascarid will not stand the very dry conditions of the box. That was a big mistake, I should have set up the 2 groups separately. Again, separation of healthy and sick groups is the key.
- Early January 2018:
I look at the hissing roaches that just started to produce babies and see that most of them have a dozen of ascarids crawling on their bodies. Because I can not find any ascarid on the walls, egg crates or feed, I am pretty sure they are parasitic. I immediately separate my boxes like that:
1: my hissing roaches box that contains ascarids
2: my crickets box. I just buy them by 1000 without breeding them so I don't know if they are clean from disease or not. I keep them away from my other boxes all the time.
3: My healthy Dubia roaches colony
I was always feeding and taking care of the 3rd box first, then the 2nd and then the 1st.
January and February were very busy so I haven't take care of the ascarid but this very simple method kept the Dubia and crickets clean from ascarids.
Today I had time to get rid of the ascarids. A very good methods for big insects affected by ascarids is to clean them under tap water. I just set up a small "hospital box" with brand new egg crate and started to clean my insects:
I was very careful to not leave a single ascarid. I transferred the clean roaches in the hospital box.
It was easy to wash the roaches but some smaller insects are much harder to wash. If every insect is a pain to wash, do not hesitate to wash only five or 6 and transfer them to the clean box.
Feed your cham with the rest of the colony.
What is important here is to make sure your clean insects are actually very clean. They will reproduce again. Don't rush, take your time. Keep in mind that a single contaminated insect put in the clean box can ruin all of your efforts.
The washing process is quite harmful for the roaches, I think they suck a lots of water while they are trying to hiss. But I was merciless, loosing a couple of insects to save the crowd is not a big deal.
I have lost 2 in the process:
I took advantage of that to do a very careful inspection of the dead bodies. I found 1 ascarid. I know now that my washing was not 100% efficient. I am going to set up an other hospital box and renew the process tomorrow. Then, I will keep the roaches for two weeks like that and check if the ascarid are not coming back. If they are not, I will put them back in the box.
Cleaning the box:
Now, the box contains only the babies, that were too small to be washed, and the soiled egg crates.
I will transfer the babies in a smaller box and let them grow to see if they shed ascarids.
The best thing to do would be to throw away all of the egg crates and cups from the box, clean the box 2 or three times with dish soap and hot water (dish soap is very efficient to kill small arthropods) and set it up with new egg crate.
But I am running out of egg crates so I will put the egg crates at 300°F for 10 min in the oven. No ascarid or eggs will survive. I like it better than microwave as the heat is more homogeneous. Keep a very close eye on your crates during that operation, you can set your place on fire. It is your responsibility to try it!
I will keep posting to tell you if that was a success but I managed to get rid of ascarids many times with that method.
As you see, all of the rules are very basic and easy but because we are in a rush everyday we all do the same mistakes. As you have seen here, I managed to keep my other boxes clean and will probably get a clean breeding box full of healthy hissing roaches.
I hope that was helpful and interesting for you guys, please ask me if you have any questions about that or regarding other health issues in your feeders.
