Things roaches in general won't eat:

Sorry for replying so late but what are "baby pine trees"? I mean are we talking small evergreens? Maybe it was a joke I missed...

radjess331 said:
ive found that when you feed your roaches like everyday the become picky like dogs and cats are...however if you feed them like once or twice a week which i plenty for a hisse colony they will eat pretty much everything.....i feed mine exactly the same stuff i feed my beetles, and my meal worms....which is pretty much anything i have on hand which is usually carrots and random letuces but they have readily taken my leftover brockly, crickets, lettuce, green beans, dead meal worms, baby pine trees, and anything else i put in with them.....lol
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I know my roaches LOVE oraganic strawberry jelly spread on bread or toast. I'll look in their enclosure the next morning and all the jelly is gone off the toast and big nibbles taken from the bread. :rolleyes:

 
My dubia and tesselata love grapefruit pulp and original flavored Milkbone dog biscuits. They always finish off the grapefruit and chew big holes in the Milkbones. They like apple pieces, tropical fish flakes, Gerber barley baby cereal, instant potato flakes, ground up rabbit food (alfalfa pellets), dried pumpkin seeds and Purina 1 chicken/rice dog food. They sort of eat carrots but it's not a favorite. They want nothing to do with either iceberg or romaine lettuce or lambsquarters (wild spinach). If I accidentally wet their paper tubes they eat the damp parts.

 
I noticed a few people say they feed carrots and I just wanted to let yall know that carrots have a natural pesticide in them that can kill a mantid or make it sick if fed a feeder insect thats eaten one. I have no idea if it effects any other insect species the same way but its better to be safe then sorry. I have never heard of this anywhere else but a friend of mine told me this resently and he is somewhat of an expert when it comes to mantids so I trust him.

 
Oh, wow. I'll have to keep that in mind. I've been using carrots as a staple diet for my roaches. Looks like I'll have to switch to some other fruit now that I've got a mantis. Thanks for that heads up. :)

 
That's weird...I've had my hisser colony for close to six years now and I feed them carrots like once a week. You wouldn't think that anything would harm a mantid that wouldn't harm a 'roach since they are so closely related...weird...?

Frack said:
I noticed a few people say they feed carrots and I just wanted to let yall know that carrots have a natural pesticide in them that can kill a mantid or make it sick if fed a feeder insect thats eaten one. I have no idea if it effects any other insect species the same way but its better to be safe then sorry. I have never heard of this anywhere else but a friend of mine told me this resently and he is somewhat of an expert when it comes to mantids so I trust him.
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Actually, my cockroaches ate Cilantro. (Mine are American cockroaches though, so I can't speak for the "fancy breeds") And my cockroaches also eat carrots, but only when I don't give them apples or such. I've avoided citrus, because though they love it, it goes moldy like nobody's business.

My cockroaches have different favorite foods, too. One of them will eat the icing off of kitkat wafers...

I also have seen them eat paper and soap. In fact, they all prefer brown paper over the nasty white stuff. More or less, you just triple wash your veggies before popping them in, just in case.

 
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I would be interested to know who has fed a mantid a carrot-eating roach that had the mantid die and found the link to the carrot, and how they confirmed this idea.

I have kept some mantids that were fed roaches to which I feed carrots on a regular basis, and I did not loose a single mantid. Therefore, this hypothesis is difficult for me to believe.

Out of the number of species of roaches that I have, both pest and exotic varieties, I have had them all consume carrots without any problems.

 
Matt K said:
I would be interested to know who has fed a mantid a carrot-eating roach that had the mantid die and found the link to the carrot, and how they confirmed this idea.I have kept some mantids that were fed roaches to which I feed carrots on a regular basis, and I did not loose a single mantid. Therefore, this hypothesis is difficult for me to believe.

Out of the number of species of roaches that I have, both pest and exotic varieties, I have had them all consume carrots without any problems.
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I'd like to add, branching out to a similar situation, different phylum; I've fed my amphibian collection primarily on lobster roaches gutloaded with carrots; I've seen nothing but an increase in amphibian coloration.

 
I know this is an old thread but has anyone found anything new to add? I know someone mentioned pineapple and I found the same thing. 7 colonies...and they all avoided the pineapple. They didn't seem to care for strawberries either.

 
Well, that is true - if feed them every day, they will became more choosy.

But carrots, pumkin and catfood and dandelion leaves mine like always. as hissers, as Blaberus, as Opisthoplatia, as Dubia.....

 
if I recall correctly, my dubias didn't seem to like kiwis...

I have heard a few people saying that specially dog food but also cat food wasn't good for the roaches that would then feed amphibians. Anyone got real informations about that matter?

Anyone tried feeding celery too? I know it's doesn't contain any vitamins or nutrients so I haven't tried.

 
I highly doubt that's true. Where did you hear this? I'm interested in why they think that...

Dubias4Canada said:
I have heard a few people saying that specially dog food but also cat food wasn't good for the roaches that would then feed amphibians. Anyone got real informations about that matter?
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people over frogfreaks.com, talkto.thefrog.org, fatfrogs.7.forumer.com

some very knowledgeable people think there is something bad in dog food specifically, but I don't recall what, and I would like to know if it is really the case... maybe the roach just destroy those bad stuffs? I have no knowledge about the matter! I just breed them:)

 
Dubias4Canada said:
people over frogfreaks.com, talkto.thefrog.org, fatfrogs.7.forumer.comsome very knowledgeable people think there is something bad in dog food specifically, but I don't recall what, and I would like to know if it is really the case... maybe the roach just destroy those bad stuffs? I have no knowledge about the matter! I just breed them:)
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I seem to recall the only really "bad" thing would be the common use of polyethelene glycol in dog food (also known as PEG), which is present in several animal feeds. This may or may not be rendered harmless by the roach. I know that if it is present in parrot food that gets fed to a toucan, it will kill the toucan. But if it were fed to something digesting it first, then to a sensitive mammal or herptile it might or might not have an effect....I don't find any info on it that far yet.....

Also, from what I can gather, it is only an ingredient in some artificially colored foods and not necessarily in naturally colored foods, though it could be present in artificially soft foods for dogs...(e.g. in a bag, not in a can).

 
My two cents on an old, but good thread. Cent #1: I once had a rosy boa that didn't want to eat. After the third attempt at thawing and refreezing his uneaten pinkie I tossed it in with the hissers, just to see what would happen. They swarmed it and there was no trace of it in less than five minutes. ( I finally got the snake eating, BTW.)

Cent #2: Over the years there have been times when I have had to go out of town for work and my co-workers didn't take very good care of the roaches. Upon my return there is nothing edible that they ever refused. Everything named in this thread has been tossed in there and eaten. We've got lots of other animals and the roaches are a good way to dispose of uneaten food. (Monkeys are particularly messy and wasteful!) If they've been eating well for a few days or weeks in a row, they might leave citrus rinds behind long enough for me to see them and toss them out, but not usually.

 
Most of my roaches wouldn't but my Surinam culture has 4 nymphs currently chewing on a (empty) plastic milk cap. Time to put some food back into it, eh? They eat SO much and anything! Goats of the roach world?

 
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