Isopods in roach habitat...

S

Shawn H

Second Instar
So I've been occasionally seeing mention of using isopods in a roach habitat to help reduce the amount of mold and waste. Whats everyones opinion of this? Is it neccessary? If you do it how does it work for you?

 
Shawn H said:
So I've been occasionally seeing mention of using isopods in a roach habitat to help reduce the amount of mold and waste. Whats everyones opinion of this? Is it neccessary? If you do it how does it work for you?
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I have Orange isopods in a couple roach cultures, and both parties seem fine. I also have Dwarf Whites in two other roach cultures, which also seem fine.

 
One of the local universities had wood lice and common isopods in with their roaches, so I don't think it'll affect them much.

 
I considered doing this a while back before I got rid of all my isopods, but never tried it for fear of the enclosures getting too dry between feedings. I was working with smaller colonies of roaches then and only had to open them once a week or less so it got pretty dry and I was afraid the isopods wouldn't do very well in those conditions.

 
I just finished adding the Dwarf White Isopods to all my colonies other than the pholyphaga and the Panesthia (Yes, I finally got a couple of young P. a. spadica).... They should work out just perfectly...with deep wood/leaf/coco fibre substrate in all my cages, the isopods whould have enough moisture (might just have to burry down a tad deeper as the cages dry out)...

 
Well I keep my hissers at about 80-90% humidity I think that would be plenty humid. Is it worth investing in some isopods?

 
Follow up:

I went ahead and ordered some of them to try in my hisser colony. They are doing good the cage is looking very clean now. I had a bit of mold starting to grow on the coco fiber but the isopods seemed to have eaten it all up now in about a week. I'll definately be adding more to my other colonies.

 
I always put White Dwarf Isopods (Trichorhina tomentosa) in all my wet substrates (roaches, millipedes, centipedes, etc) and I never had problems... they work well, reproduce a lot and keep more aired the substrate...

 
I'm thinking about ordering some isopods for my hisser colony. They won't interfere with the hisser nymphs or anything, right? I don't think they will, but I figure I'm better safe than sorry.

 
RosenKrieger said:
I'm thinking about ordering some isopods for my hisser colony. They won't interfere with the hisser nymphs or anything, right? I don't think they will, but I figure I'm better safe than sorry.
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They won't bother hisser nymphs or most species but they crowd out the slow growing Arenivaga species.

 
Dwarf whites are real popular with exotic animal keepers and will pretty much always be due to their rather slow reproduction. So you'll have no problem getting rid of them.

 
Thanks for that info. I'm going to go ahead and order some with part of my next paycheck. I've got a few more enclosures to clean up now, not just Hissers. :P

 
RosenKrieger said:
Doh! Oh well. At the rate I'm acquiring inverts, I'm gonna need all I can get. lol
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If you have any lizards they will pretty much take care of any invert overpopulation problems you can have. My 4 monitor lizards and 12 tarantulas keep my 6 colonies of roaches in check pretty well. And I have isopods in 3 of the 6 roach colonies. (6 dif roach species)

Too bad my pythons don't eat roaches, that would be perfect.

 
Shawn H said:
If you have any lizards they will pretty much take care of any invert overpopulation problems you can have. My 4 monitor lizards and 12 tarantulas keep my 6 colonies of roaches in check pretty well. And I have isopods in 3 of the 6 roach colonies. (6 dif roach species)Too bad my pythons don't eat roaches, that would be perfect.
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I just got a tarantula. He might eat the extra isopods. haha

 
From my romantic-ecological point of view, I always prefer to give my animals (birds, reptiles , roaches etc.) the most 'natural' habitat conditions. As for roaches , I simply put rotten leaves and rich, humic soil (collected from an oak wood near my home) in their plastic container . That's all. This is not a sterile 'substrate' but a little universe populated by million microscopic creepers. (That's BIODIVERSITY at his best!) . As my Polyphaga species live most of their life underground, I like to think they enjoy the company! Moreover they don't eat any kind of 'commercial' food I give them.

So, I suppose all these micro-critters will produce good pre-digested leaf and wood stuff for the roaches to eat.

p.s I added some Trichorhyna for best , bought from the man named EffeCì.....

romango

 
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