Combined Feeder/Cleaner/Plant Cutting Culture

[ohaple]

We have worked up good enclosures for our mantids, but have found that the feeder insects become more of a chore than anything else. We are trying to simplify how we keep our feeder cultures, our spare isopod cultures, and our plant cuttings.

Here is my thought:

Create a display enclosure that will contain substrate, isopods, green banana roaches, and plant cuttings. It will be housed near our mantids. We are switching from dubias to green banana roaches since they are more interesting and produce nymphs which grow to a good variety of sizes. I also think that their climbing ability will be helpful so that we can allow the mantids to hunt rather than be hand fed like we have to do with the dubias. They require some heat and humidity unlike the dubias. So then I started thinking that it would be nice to keep some isopods in with the roaches to keep things clean. But then how to furnish it? Why not use cuttings from our plants in the other enclosures as they grow too large?

My hope is that this will leave us with an active breeding cleaner culture, feeder culture, and plant culture so that we can keep our mantids happy and healthy. As a bonus, it would be more attractive and even serve as a sort of secondary pet. I have read some people have issues with keeping isopods and roaches together since the isopods will eat up too much frass. We will still supplement food with house and blue bottle flies, but those are no work to keep in the fridge until ready to hatch them.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Is this doomed for failure?

For now we are keeping everything separate. The banana roaches should arrive later this week.

 

[MantisGirl13]

It is an interesting idea! I hope it works!

- MantisGirl13

 

[The Mantis Menagerie]

The only problem I see is with the banana roaches. I had a colony for a while, and I can tell you that they constantly try to escape. They are good at climbing, and they can also fly really well. Plus, my mantids didn't seem to take much interest in the adults, and the nymphs quickly burrow. I would recommend lobster roaches or maybe red runner roaches for feeding mantids. (Disclaimer: All three of these species technically require USDA permits, and Josh's Frogs is the only company I know of with permits for any of these species, but they only sell the lobster roaches.) 

 

[ohaple]

The only problem I see is with the banana roaches. I had a colony for a while, and I can tell you that they constantly try to escape. They are good at climbing, and they can also fly really well. Plus, my mantids didn't seem to take much interest in the adults, and the nymphs quickly burrow. I would recommend lobster roaches or maybe red runner roaches for feeding mantids. (Disclaimer: All three of these species technically require USDA permits, and Josh's Frogs is the only company I know of with permits for any of these species, but they only sell the lobster roaches.) 

Good insight, thank you. We plan to use the grease trick to keep them away from the lid. I understand they can fly, but most videos I have seen, they don't fly out of the enclosure. If they do, we will get a taller enclosure. I will document our experience here to see how it works out.

 

[Ziiggy's Insectarium]

I own a colony of banana roaches and I can say that they are pretty good for feeding young insects as they are a soft bodied roach but like mentioned above boy do they like to test the anti escape methods. I had to result in putting some screen door mesh hot glued to the lid of the critter cage, which I need to change today as the current one had a hole melted in the bottom from my heating pad so will see how that goes and also gonna test the idea of either a substrate-less set up or very minimal substrate material.

 

[The Mantis Menagerie]

Good insight, thank you. We plan to use the grease trick to keep them away from the lid. I understand they can fly, but most videos I have seen, they don't fly out of the enclosure. If they do, we will get a taller enclosure. I will document our experience here to see how it works out.

I tried grease as well, but most of the adults ended up sitting on the lid of the tank waiting to escape. 

 

[ohaple]

@The Mantis Menagerie Out of curiosity, was your enclosure a normal opaque rubbermaid style roach enclosure? Or was it transparent?

My hope is that keeping them in a transparent enclosure in a room with lighting will encourage them to seek dark shelter under the bark etc that we provide rather than sitting out in the open or attaching to the lid. We plan to give them plenty of places to hide so they don't get stressed, but hopefully it makes their escape tendencies more manageable.

 

[The Mantis Menagerie]

I kept the banana roaches in a transparent Sterilite bin. The bin was on a heat mat in a well-lit room, so the light did not deter them from perching on the lid despite plenty of hiding places. 

 

[ohaple]

I kept the banana roaches in a transparent Sterilite bin. The bin was on a heat mat in a well-lit room, so the light did not deter them from perching on the lid despite plenty of hiding places. 

Dang. Well, we will see how it goes.

 

[ohaple]

We got everything in last night and set it up to contain the spare isopods and banana roaches.

We added lots of springtails, a few dwarf white isopods, 5 giant canyon isopods, and 15-20 banana roaches (maybe 6 are adult?)

We made a normal substrate to help hold moisture, and then added leaf litter and some mood moss.

We added egg crate, but plan to replace it with something more attractive and moisture resistant.

The isopods are really fun. They are quite large and pretty active.

The roaches are also quite cool. The young nymphs look like tiny beetles. The older nymphs look like traditional cockroaches. The adults are a great green color and are very attractive.

While setting it up, a few tried to escape by climbing up the walls and out, but it was very manageable. Only one tried to fly, and it was very brief inside the enclosure. This morning I haven't noticed any on the lid, so hopefully they don't like how the transparent lid is to hide on. I think the moss makes it look much nicer, but I am not sure it will get enough light as is. I am also concerned with the isopods eating too much frass, so I am going to get someplace for the roaches to hide that is just for them.

So far so good, hopefully they stay healthy and breeding well.

 

[ohaple]

We kept looking after them this weekend to see how it was going. We added a heat pad to keep them more in the mid 70s. Our biggest surprise is how much the roaches are burrowing. We thought they had somehow escaped until we dug in and found them inside the soil. Even giving them places to hide under moss and leaves and a ceramic hide, they burrow down. No attempted escapees yet. Is this typical behavior for the banana roaches? The videos I watched didn't use substrate so I hadn't thought of it. The isopods and springtails seem to be happily breeding and munching away. The container still smells completely fresh despite 80-90% humidity. We are keeping our eyes out for a shallow food dish so that the veggies don't make as much of a mess, but all the ones I have found locally are too deep.

 

[The Mantis Menagerie]

The nymphs spend most of their time burrowing, and my mantids always had trouble catching them before they burrowed. The adults typically will hide on the underside of something like cork bark, but they also burrow occasionally. It is only when the colony grows to large for them to all fit in the provided hiding spots that the adults constantly try to escape. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending how you look at it), the colony grows extremely quickly, and there is soon not enough room for all the adults to hide. Also, my banana roaches always had this annoying habit of burying their food dish. 

 

[ohaple]

The nymphs spend most of their time burrowing, and my mantids always had trouble catching them before they burrowed. The adults typically will hide on the underside of something like cork bark, but they also burrow occasionally. It is only when the colony grows to large for them to all fit in the provided hiding spots that the adults constantly try to escape. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending how you look at it), the colony grows extremely quickly, and there is soon not enough room for all the adults to hide. Also, my banana roaches always had this annoying habit of burying their food dish. 

That is what I expected, but 100% of the adults and nymphs buried themselves despite having several other places to hide. Our colony is only about 15-20 strong right now, and there is no lack of available space under the hide or moss or leaves. The container is maybe 16"x24", with about 2" of substrate and 3" of air. We have never seen one perched on the lid, or even on the walls, when we go to get them out. This whole thing confuses me because the behavior is so different from every article I have read and video I have seen. We will keep them for a little while, but it will be inconvenient to feed if we have to dig them out of hiding each time. They are very attractive and we otherwise like keeping them. The isopods are breeding quickly which is nice, because I am pretty sure Carl has been snacking on the ones in his enclosure.

 

[ohaple]

A little update in case anyone is interested in duplicating.

We found a couple dead adult banana roaches on the floor by the mantis shelf, meaning they found a way to escape through the thin gap in the lid. That is unnaceptable, since we are not interested in finding dead roaches around the house, and because it diminishes the breeding potential of our small little colony.

So we bought two of the gasket containers at Target that I regularly read about on the cockroach forum. They are supposed to be air tight, which mean no room to have escapes. We cut a small notch to run thermo/hygrometer wires out of, and drilled several holes for ventilation. We then glued a fine aluminum mesh to cover the holes.

I also bought another set of 10-15 dubias at the reptile store to hopefully kick off our breeding a little bit (we only had maybe 15 dubias before, none adult). My SO doesn't like the buildup of visible frass with the dubias, so she asked me to include a thin layer of substrate with them. It will make cleaning more of a pain, but it makes her happier.

For the isopods, we decided to move them into a smaller container until they are able to get their numbers up some. We had 5 giant canyon isopods and 8 dwarf white isopods in the 12x16" container with the banana roaches. While they seemed like they were doing well, it was too large to be able to keep an eye on their numbers, and I suspect breeding will happen faster if they are in close proximity to one another. We plan to add them back in with the roaches once the population has increased.

The hard part was sorting through the substrate to transfer the little guys. We initially set up the banana roaches with 3" of substrate. That made for a lot of sifting to make sure we didn't miss any dwarf whites or roach nymphs.

Now they are set up better, in well-sealed enclosures, and with the isopods separated out. The springtails will still be in charge of cleanup duty.

My biggest confusion is why the mood moss is doing so well. We haven't watered it once, just relying on the existing substrate moisture and 70-80% humidity in the containers. It gets almost no light. But somehow, it looks very healthy and green. The mood moss in our mantis enclosures is starting to look terrible. Maybe too much water or too much light? I don't know plants well. The humidity is lower in the mantis enclosures, but the moss gets more direct water, and lots of light. We need to figure out how to better care for some of these plants. We don't have any cuttings yet to include, but the philodendron is getting close to needing some pruning.

 

[MantisGirl13]

I am glad it is going well! It seems like you are getting stuff figured out now!

- MantisGirl13