Lesser mealworms- good or bad?

Salmonsaladsandwich

Salmonsaladsandwich

Eleventh Instar
I'd like to hear everyone's experiences and opinions on adding these things to roach colonies. Are they harmless and helpful for removing excess waste and dead roaches, or will they take over and compete with, stress, or in any way harm the the colony unless kept under control? I'm worried that they might eat all the food, chew on molters or just become so numerous that they constantly annoy the roaches and I would have to take them out and get rid of them all the time if I put them in my dubia colony.

 
I haven't had any issues with them stressing out roaches or chewing on molting and freshly molted roaches. The only issue I've had with them is that they will feed on any oothecae before they develop enough to hatch, so I've always had to remove oothecae from enclosures with the beetles in order to get nymphs.

 
They can reproduce out of control if the population isn't kept in check. They're more of an annoyance for the roaches and their keepers when they reach those levels. The colonies still seem to thrive, but I still wouldn't want a hoard of beetles everywhere in the enclosure.

I haven't noticed mine eating oothecae like the previous user posted.

 
I've reccommended lesser mealworms before, but I'm starting to dislike them just a tiny bit. In some of my colonies, they can be controlled by placing shallow bowls of water to drown them. In some of my other colonies, I cannot do this because the roaches will drown as well. I'm not sure why certain roach species avoid drowning better than others, but when the lesser mealworm colonies get large, they become a nuisance because they eat food meant for the roaches. Also, they're hard to remove manually because they're small, fairly quick, and will go into the substrate.

 
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