Hi, Frank Indiviglio here. I’m a herpetologist, zoologist, and book author, recently retired from a career spent at several zoos, aquariums, and museums, including over 20 years with the Bronx Zoo The orange-spotted or guyana roach, Blaptica dubia, often starts out as pet food but winds up as a pet. It’s small wonder, as these attractive insects are very interesting in their own right, and most agreeable to exhibiting their natural behaviors to the patient observer. Coming into Their Own Roaches are finally getting the attention they deserve from pet keepers, and even zoos are beginning to highlight them in exhibits. I housed many species at the Staten Island Zoo, and a new exhibit at the Bronx Zoo features a hollow tree stocked with thousands of Malagasy hissing roaches. But my favorite was set up many years ago at the Cincinnati Zoo’s groundbreaking Insectarium….visitors looked through a cutaway cabinet at a “kitchen” stocked with a colony American roaches. The huge insects were fed from cereal boxes, sandwiches left on a table and so forth…years later I tried to replicate this at the Bronx Zoo, for Norway rats, but the idea failed to impress my curator! Read the rest of this article here http://bit.ly/1sU3KOc Please also check out my posts on Twitter http://bitly.com/JP27Nj and Facebook http://on.fb.me/KckP1m My Bio, with photos of animals I’ve been lucky enough to work with: http://bitly.com/LC8Lbp Best Regards, Frank
Hi all! Sorry for my badly english. Please help in the maintenance of B.Dubia. I have on this moment 75 adult and 50-70 "baby" dubia. I read that give them orange. But they not very fond of orange. And 3 females have dropped their ootheca. As well it is winter and the container stands near the battery that gives dry as I understand, but inside there is also a water bowl that gives humidity (though not great). Do not tell me why they dropped ootheca? I give them a pumpkin, white bread, oatmeal, carrots, banana, source of protein - gammarus. Do I have to give them calcium? And in what form? Read that it is necessary for the small ones. Gave milled sepia, they ate it.
Hello, Overcrowding or other stresses can cause this, but it could also be an individual problem - female is ill or eggs are infertile etc; some such losses are normal, ..if all do so, then we'll need to review care more closely. Check also that your nightime tempos are warm enough...they are usually tolerant of low humidity, but you can spray a bit and cover part of the screen top with plastic if you wish to increase. Gammarus should be a good source of calcium; you can also mix reptile calcium into their food, ground cuttlebone (the sepia you mentioned?), high calcium commercial cricket diet. Best,. Frank
