Mites

[Mwewe]

Hey folks, I’ve had a blatticomposting bin with several species of roaches, small Buffalo beetles, various cooties (mites, ants, pirate bugs). It’s been running for 1-2 years, I think. 
I was sifting through the bin today to remove adults and larger nymphs, since I want to use the substrate they’ve been living on for cannabis and veggie grow bags. It also seemed like a good idea to just separate out the species to monitor colony growth better.

•Eublaberus serranus and posticus  have a good amount of adults, heaps of various-sized nymphs.
• I might have found some ivories, but not 100% sure.

•Only a few shadow roach adults, but plenty of nymphs (black with dull black “pants”.

•A few adult lobster roaches
•1 old old female hisser  

•there’s some elongated nymphs… either hissers or lobster I’m assuming  

Unbeknownst to me, the rain had popped the socket their heat lamp was connected to sometime in December, and I had a major die-off, that was corrected, and I got a chance to remove a lot of carcasses.

I found one large Eublaberus  nymph alive, but COVERED with mites down at the very bottom of the bin. Some of the other roaches have them, but not in excessive numbers. 
Are the mites hurting the roaches, or are they opportunistically swarming unhealthy ones? 

 

Idk why the pictures and video look like they were recorded using a potato. 

 

[Hisserdude]

Grain mites like those will attach to roaches in their hypopus stage when their numbers are high enough, (usually happens when there's an excess of rotting food in a humid environment). They can in fact harm roaches and other inverts by attaching to and clogging up limb joints, mouthparts and breathing spiracles.

It's quite hard to remove the mites manually without harming the roaches, your best bet is to move the roaches to fresh, mite free substrate and hope the mites will detach themselves over time, (or that most of the problematic ones will be removed after the roaches shed their skin).

 

[Mwewe]

Grain mites like those will attach to roaches in their hypopus stage when their numbers are high enough, (usually happens when there's an excess of rotting food in a humid environment). They can in fact harm roaches and other inverts by attaching to and clogging up limb joints, mouthparts and breathing spiracles.

It's quite hard to remove the mites manually without harming the roaches, your best bet is to move the roaches to fresh, mite free substrate and hope the mites will detach themselves over time, (or that most of the problematic ones will be removed after the roaches shed their skin).

Thanks Hisser! You always seem to find my posts and I greatly appreciate your input ^_^
The population probably exploded after the die off I had. 

it sounds like I’ve done most of the work already by removing the large nymphs/ adults I was able to find the other day. The smaller nymphs didn’t seem to have any on them, and most of the adults didn’t have major infestation, if at all. I churned up all the substrate top to bottom in the bin, removed the dead. 
The substrate needs changing anyways, I’ve just never been sure on how to get all the flippin buggies out. I figured if I just keep taking out large nymphs/adults I’ll eventually run out of babies  

There’s fresh substrate in their temporary housing (18qt bins). I have a set of 30qt bins coming. I did my best not to get old substrate in with the roaches, but the Eublaberus are maniacs and getting stabbed by their legs hurts, so I used little deli cups to scoop them out. 
This substrate is the same composition as the isopod/milli substrate (new additions, completely separate bins), so organic garden soil, oak pellets, sphagnum moss, and dried oak leaves. 
i think the initial substrate was all, or mostly, coconut fiber… which has now turned to black gold  

 

[WarrenB]

The substrate needs changing anyways, I’ve just never been sure on how to get all the flippin buggies out.

I need to clean out my duesta in a week or so, to up-ventilate and de-mite. I've been wondering the same thing.