What's your FAVORITE feeder roach?

What's your fastest breeding roach

  • I will explain in post

    Votes: 17 58.6%

  • I'm not telling

    Votes: 12 41.4%
  • Total voters
    29
I'll start.

My favorite feeder and fastest breeder are the lats, but they still don't breed quite fast enough to feed all my animals!

 
my favorites are the dubia, they are really cool looking and good and meaty. the fastest producing are definitely the lats. i don't remember how many i started with but 4 months after i got them, i sent a shipment of 1000 EXTRAS to some guy in CA!

 
This is a tuffy - it really boils down to precisely what I'm feeding. For example, some species of gecko (in the Rhacodactylus genus, specifically) will turn their noses up to any roach that isn't relatively fast moving; movement really triggers their hunting instinct. That being said, the majority prefer lats over anything else. But dubia and discoids are by far my favorite to feed to just about anything else - their easier to catch, easier for me to deal with, and my herps eat them with gusto.

So As fas as favorite feeder goes, I'd rank mine in this order: 1 - Blaptica dubia, 2 - Blaberus discoidalis, 3 - Shelfordella (Blatta) lateralis, 4 - Nauphoeta cinerea. I can't appropriately rank my E. posticus because I haven't fed any off, still trying to get the colony going strong, but I'd wager they would be up there with the dubia and discoids.

My most productive roach? Pretty darn close between the lats and the lobsters. I favor the live birthers, but once I got the kinks sorted out in my lat husbandry they've been getting a little out of hand...It's hard to compete against a roach that can lay egg cases at such a rapid rate.

 
well my fastest breeding roach and the one i feed the most out of all my colonies are my B. lateralis but defiantly not my favorite that would go to my b. dubias. there fairly good and regular breeders, vary meaty, easy to catch and thay are a vary good looking roach to top it off.

 
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I'm the same as Ozy on this. Blaptica dubia is my favorite feeder because they are meaty, relatively soft bodied, and a very pretty roach with NO smell at all. As for speed of production, if anyone has seen my posts on my lats lately you'll know what's up lol. My lobsters are fast breeders and doing great but I don't actually feed them off to anything right now. Their colony is several hundred but I don't like using feeders that can climb glass. That's why I don't use my Panchlora nivea adults as feeders, that and they fly lol. I still really like my roaches though, regardless of their usefulness as feeders. My firefly mimmic and woods roaches are good examples of non feeders that are still great to have.

 
I wonder where zephyr is with his orangeheads.....

vfox: I love feeding glass climbers to my geckos, but that's the only thing I feed them to (with the exception of hissers, of cource :D )

RedEarthExotics: don't ship them to a random guy in CA, ship them to me :P (joking---but if you take it seriously, then good)

 
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hisserman said:
RedEarthExotics: don't ship them to a random guy in CA, ship them to me :P (joking---but if you take it seriously, then good)
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That was about 2 years ago, my lat colony has extinguished now. i need to start some back up for my smaller tarantulas and scorps. that's the only bad thing about dubias, they HIDE! when i feed them to my tarantulas i mostly have to use my hemostats and hold the roach for them until they grab it. with the lateralis, i didn't have this problem.

oh, and on a side note....it is NOT easy putting 1000 lateralis in a cardboard box!!

 
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I feed my Banana Greens to my turtles, but once my orangeheads get rolling they will be feed to my monitors. The banana greens are fast & don't really hide adults do climb & they breed fast.

 
RedEarthExotics said:
That was about 2 years ago, my lat colony has extinguished now. i need to start some back up for my smaller tarantulas and scorps. that's the only bad thing about dubias, they HIDE! when i feed them to my tarantulas i mostly have to use my hemostats and hold the roach for them until they grab it. with the lateralis, i didn't have this problem.

oh, and on a side note....it is NOT easy putting 1000 lateralis in a cardboard box!!
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:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Putting 1000 lats in a cardboard box...... lol that's a death sentence! I'd rather freeze them

 
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Just cause they are fast breeders and seem to be meaty, it is hard to do a mama though, I just hate it when I catch one of them, always trying to put her back.

ps, got any more of these? Banana Greens

 
Personally... I don't like B. dubia as a feeder. The nymphs are oddly shaped and coarse; my beardies won't touch them anymore.

NOW EUBLABERUS ON THE OTHER HAND... They love 'em. They'll eat six-spots, ivories, or orangeheads all day long if I let them. The nymphs are so plump, and the newborns are much softer than dubias. Plus they don't have that "playing dead" reflex.

I haven't had a good sized colony of discoids in a long time but I recall them reproducing much faster than B. dubias. I still can't quite figure out how that species became so popular. lol

**EDIT- lol, I just noticed the poll option. :lol:

 
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Hibiscusmile said:
Just cause they are fast breeders and seem to be meaty, it is hard to do a mama though, I just hate it when I catch one of them, always trying to put her back.

ps, got any more of these? Banana Greens
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Mine are breeding well but still too little to part out. Message Zephyr, he has tons. :P

 
Zephyr - I too have noticed that my orange head nymphs seem to be substantially meater than the other species I keep. I'm excited to try these out when the colony gets going. The discoid (likely blaberus hybrid) nymphs tend to be relatively shy like dubia when being fed and seem to be less 'meaty' still. Mt rhacs turn their noses up to these too, for when their fed these both either sit there or hide immediately and stay put. Beardies are always a good resource for judging bugs - mine began to ignore just about anything when I started feeding silkworms and hornworms as staples, if they get picky about something, you know it's something they really like (or rather dislike as opposed to) lol

I will say - the only species that's worked for me in naturalistic vivaria is the lateralis. Unless you opt to cup feed which I've been doing from time to time, the other species will pretty much just hide quickly and stay put. In addition, a lot of nymphs have the ability to burrow and smash theirselves tightly against surfaces to where they cannot easily be removed (or noticed for that matter) by the herp. The lats pretty much run around constantly and eventually get noticed and eaten.

 
JeffreH said:
I will say - the only species that's worked for me in naturalistic vivaria is the lateralis. Unless you opt to cup feed which I've been doing from time to time, the other species will pretty much just hide quickly and stay put. In addition, a lot of nymphs have the ability to burrow and smash theirselves tightly against surfaces to where they cannot easily be removed (or noticed for that matter) by the herp. The lats pretty much run around constantly and eventually get noticed and eaten.
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have to agree which is another reason i use them more. especially with my Malaysian Cat who wont touch any thing that is moving. i will say though that if there is any thing thay can get behind or under thay will hide there. i actually had them hiding in the tree fern paneling i was using in one tank one of the reasons i actually scraped that tank lol.

i'm getting some orange head from zephyr soon so will see how those work out.

 
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Zephyr you're always telling us how awesome they are, so:

hisserman said:
I wonder where zephyr is with his orangeheads.....
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Hahaha

Zephyr said:
Personally... I don't like B. dubia as a feeder. The nymphs are oddly shaped and coarse; my beardies won't touch them anymore.

NOW EUBLABERUS ON THE OTHER HAND... They love 'em. They'll eat six-spots, ivories, or orangeheads all day long if I let them. The nymphs are so plump, and the newborns are much softer than dubias. Plus they don't have that "playing dead" reflex.

I haven't had a good sized colony of discoids in a long time but I recall them reproducing much faster than B. dubias. I still can't quite figure out how that species became so popular. lol

**EDIT- lol, I just noticed the poll option. :lol:
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We all saw it coming :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

RedEarthExotics said:
i'm sure there is a trick to it, but i don't know it...
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I know: put them in the fridge for 15 minutes so they're slow, then do it :P B)

 
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