Can you feed dead house plants?

L

lonelyronin

First Instar
I was wondering if you can feed dead house plant clippings to hissers?

I was also reading somewhere about only feeding hissers once or twice a week - I always keep the dry dog/cat food in the enclosure, and give fresh every couple of days. Is this what was meant?

Thanks

Laura

 
I think I would skip the house plants just because so many of them seem to be poisonous to other pets. As for your feeding schedule everyone has their own personal opinion on what to feed their roaches and how often to do it. I personally don't see anything wrong with what your doing. I give my roaches dry food once a week and fresh fruit and veggies whenever they are available.

 
Since I have cats, I've made sure not to have any poisonous plants around, but I won't bother trying it with roaches - different physiology.

Thanks for the reply.

 
Thick-leaved and shiny-leaved house plants usually have silica crystals imbedded in their tissues which may cause internal irritation and possibly infection. Ficus plants produce a mildly toxic latex-based compound that most insects naturally avoid. Most house plants that have tender leaves are perfectly edible to insects, however, my concern is that many greenhouses use soil-applied systemic insecticides which incorporate into the plant tissues through transpiration. Some of these compounds can remain active in the soil for years. Unless you know for certain that these are not present, I would suggest not feeding your roaches any plant matter that you would not eat yourself.

 
I have live houseplants (fern, nyphthytis, pothos, spider plant, ivy) in with my roaches to create a terrarium. They never get munched on or eaten, and I have to go through and clean the dead bits out monthly! Not sure if there are house plants out there that they would prefer more than what they're already getting diet-wise.

 
Yeah, I would tend to avoid feeding houseplants because you never know what's on them, plus the poisonous thing. I would hate to toss some clippings in with my roaches and end up with something worse than grain mites.

 
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