no more stinkin crickets

[Marleykeeper]

well its official im done with crickets marley pollished off the rest of my stash tonight, i have and order of dubias shipping out monday and my question is should i feed marley supers or mealies until the colony takes off. im not much of a worm guy but im leaning toward supers just because they dont morph into beetles and are a bit bigger.

Also one other question, kinda off topic but i didnt think it was worthy of a new thread. i had previously ordered dubia roaches to start a colony but i didnt realise i had to go out of town so i asked a friend to watch the mialbox for me so he could grab the dubias, well lets just say hes not the brightest and the dubias ended up dying he proceded to leave the dead roaches in the tank for a few days before taking most of them out. so i come home and find about ten live dubia and about ten dead ones and it stinks so bad there are nats flying around. so i put the live ones in a tuperware box while i washed out the tank. i put the roaches back in everything clean and the tank still has a pungent smell. is this just from the dead roaches, or do dubia have a musty rotted smell. from everything ive read dubias dont smell so im hoping that it was just from the dead roaches can anyone who has a colony let me know?

 

[SFgeckos]

Sorry to hear about your first dubia experience, hopefully any future transactions are better! Just remember, sometimes trying to save a few dollars can cost much more! If your next transaction still doesn't work out, contact me and I'll hook you up.

The temperatures in your TX location can be in the mid 90F+ which may have explained the high percentage of roach losses. Generally speaking, if packaged correctly and not exposed to high temperatures the roaches can live for many days, even weeks inside the packaged box.

The smell of the deceased roaches can linger for a while, I would recommend using diluted bleach to clean the tank and rinse extremely well. Let me know if you have other questions!

Jon

 

[Marleykeeper]

Thank you for the tip. They sat in the mailbox all day and just cooked. This time around I'm going to take the package from the delivery mans hands. Im using watermelon for my water source could this have somthing to do with the smell?