Clean Up Crew...do they eat roach poop?

[Kaia]

When I get roaches I plan on having clean up crews (CUC), partly because I love isopods etc and partly because they make cleaning so much easier (my snail and slug enclosures stay very clean due to CUC).

One thing I'm confused about though is whether the CUC will eat roach poop?

Because if I use eco earth and have a bunch of springtails and isopods in the substrate that would make it difficult to throw out the substrate without throwing out the CUC... I've heard though that roach poop isn't good to breathe in so I would want to make sure they're kept clean.

 

[Hisserdude]

Now, this is a part of the roach hobby that I do not have much knowledge in, I don't exactly know how much poop in a roach cage is too much, or if there is even a need to worry.

In most of my well developed colonies I've not had to remove frass, even when the whole top layer of the substrate is grass they don't seem to mind. I don't know if I'm supposed to be removing it or not, the only time I've removed the layer of frass on top of an enclosure's substrate is when I had to scoop out a whole bunch of roach carcasses from my Rhabdoblatta formosana cage.

I've never heard of a clean up crew that eats frass, and of all the isopods and springtails I use, I have yet to find one.

 

[dcfarms]

We keep black buffalo beetle in our dry tanks and the micro-mealworms devour through the frass and dropped food as well as dead bodies on occasion. There are times when the dry tanks get to humid and a change to egg cartons is needed and we scoop out excess frass but we wear dust masks and goggles for protection. It also keeps the micro-mealworm numbers down to a manageable number. But leaving frass behind is also needed to keep the colony healthy.