Matt K
Eurycotis
Commentary:
Complacency affects us all sooner or later (and for some, regularly!). Today I note that while I have always been very concerned about containment- in that I have my room of roaches virtually escape-proof into the rest of the house- sometime or another I overlooked inter-bin transferrance.
While checking my wonderfully black Pycnoscelus (niger, or so it seems), I found that other Pycnoscelus (surinamensis) had snuck out of thier bin and into this one somehow, and the result after who knows how many weeks is a disaster- a roach that is not really identifiable- like a dark suriname. Miffed that I now have to burn this lot I go about feeding a few other bins. What do I find? You got it. Surinames in several various bins rapidly out numbering the resident colony in just a matter of a couple/few weeks in some cases. And to add insult to injury, a similar circumstance involving Nauphoeta cinerea in a couple of tubs- nearly wiping out my defenseless and meager Diploptera punctata. The thing about either of these invasive species is that they eat other roach species' nymphs as they molt, resulting in no nymphs of the resident species until the adults all die off.
So the lesson here: NEVER neglect seemingly indestructable species like Pycnoscelus or lobsters- they will eat everything else you have if given the chance. Tomorrow I will be doing some serious bin cleaning and burning of substrate- the hassle here is that to do so all the obvious livestock has to be moved into a fresh bin with fresh substrate/egg cartons and it takes a while to catch out each one of the right species and not transfer any of the wrong one. Then to knock out /kill whats left with alchohol, then to scoop all that into the fire (which I do outdoors, not in the fireplace in the house).
Do yourself a favor, and even if maintenance is annual, do it.
Complacency affects us all sooner or later (and for some, regularly!). Today I note that while I have always been very concerned about containment- in that I have my room of roaches virtually escape-proof into the rest of the house- sometime or another I overlooked inter-bin transferrance.
While checking my wonderfully black Pycnoscelus (niger, or so it seems), I found that other Pycnoscelus (surinamensis) had snuck out of thier bin and into this one somehow, and the result after who knows how many weeks is a disaster- a roach that is not really identifiable- like a dark suriname. Miffed that I now have to burn this lot I go about feeding a few other bins. What do I find? You got it. Surinames in several various bins rapidly out numbering the resident colony in just a matter of a couple/few weeks in some cases. And to add insult to injury, a similar circumstance involving Nauphoeta cinerea in a couple of tubs- nearly wiping out my defenseless and meager Diploptera punctata. The thing about either of these invasive species is that they eat other roach species' nymphs as they molt, resulting in no nymphs of the resident species until the adults all die off.
So the lesson here: NEVER neglect seemingly indestructable species like Pycnoscelus or lobsters- they will eat everything else you have if given the chance. Tomorrow I will be doing some serious bin cleaning and burning of substrate- the hassle here is that to do so all the obvious livestock has to be moved into a fresh bin with fresh substrate/egg cartons and it takes a while to catch out each one of the right species and not transfer any of the wrong one. Then to knock out /kill whats left with alchohol, then to scoop all that into the fire (which I do outdoors, not in the fireplace in the house).
Do yourself a favor, and even if maintenance is annual, do it.
