Should I clean my roaches?

[LizMarie]

I haven't had my roaches very long maybe like two months or so and I know your suppose to clean out the bin like every 6-8months because the droppings are nutritious and the babies tend to eat it up but I've run into a small problem...

I don't mess with them much because I want them to breed. For the first month I would mess with them everyday but since then I only mess around with them like once or twice a week and thats all. Anyway last week I placed some water crystals and some food into two plastic petri dishes. Today a week later I opened the bin and it SMELLS ugh. You know when you leave water in a plastic bottle for toooo long and theres that weird smell that says in the bottle, thats the smell. I dunno what they did with the water crystals but everything on that side of the bin it wet, egg crates, their droppings, etc. making it a big mess. I'm thinking of cleaning out the entire thing and starting new again. Will that delay my breeding even more? ANd should I look out for anything because I'm scared that the mess might hurt my roaches that would in turn hurt my leo?

Plus any advice on avoiding this issue in the future would really help!

 

[gothra]

I clean (change) their bin once every 2 months, and separate all the babies and nymphs at that time. So far, my roaches are still breeding fine; I hardly ever have dropped egg case due to cleaning. With the food, I change it once every 2-3 days; I have the dry food on one end of the tub and water crystals on the other. So there is lesser chance for the dry food to get wet and mold. As long as you don't flip the egg crates to check on the roaches, I think its fine for you to change the food and do small cleanings more often.

If your tub is smelling bad, I think its time to do a big cleaning and change all the egg crates now!

 

[snakegirl]

i dont think it will hurt at all cleaning them, but not cleaning them will. roaches run on Really no care, What you can do it Pick them out *be brave* and place them in another bin and throw out the crates and replace with new, Clean out the bin really well with water and soap. then make sure its dry. after its dry put some new crates in there, and put new roaches in there with new food/water. and it will be great again. they will keep breeding no matter what you do. good luck!

 

[TheRoachGuy]

Your having a high humidity problem like the above poster stated I would change the flats if they are wet depending on the frask which is the droppings if they are just moist don’t worry about it just leave top off for a day and should dry out. If it’s past that just clean it out and replace with new flats, food.
They thing you really have to worry about is it not happing again. I live in Va and we have high humidity here in the summer. I have to replace the tops of my totes with what I call my summer tops. I just cut out almost the whole top and place screen on it and in the winter its very dry here so I just have a small 8x8 hole to keep humidity in. I would get this fixed asap to much humidity will make mold and that will kill your colony for sure.
Shoot me an email if you have any questions.
Thanks Jason

 

[LizMarie]

Yeah I'm cleaning them out tomorrow even though I might not have any crates until next week. I decided to order some from theroachguy because almost everything on one side got wet and I don't want to risk the chance of mold. uggh. I'm just not having any luck this week with enclosures.

 

[LizMarie]

Your having a high humidity problem like the above poster stated I would change the flats if they are wet depending on the frask which is the droppings if they are just moist don’t worry about it just leave top off for a day and should dry out. If it’s past that just clean it out and replace with new flats, food.
They thing you really have to worry about is it not happing again. I live in Va and we have high humidity here in the summer. I have to replace the tops of my totes with what I call my summer tops. I just cut out almost the whole top and place screen on it and in the winter its very dry here so I just have a small 8x8 hole to keep humidity in. I would get this fixed asap to much humidity will make mold and that will kill your colony for sure.
Shoot me an email if you have any questions.
Thanks Jason

I actually bought my roaches from you and just ordered some egg crates today . . . :main_yes:

I'll try finding some mesh screen for the top because right now I just have screw driver sized holes punched in through the top, which probably isn't letting enough humidity escape. (I can't leave the tank off because my cat find the roaches "interesting.") And clean it out because the "frask" on that side as been basically matted down somehow and seems kind on pasted on the edge of the bin and some of the crates were soggy, pretty nasty and the smell isn't pleasant either.

 

[TheRoachGuy]

Yeah I'm cleaning them out tomorrow even though I might not have any crates until next week. I decided to order some from theroachguy because almost everything on one side got wet and I don't want to risk the chance of mold. uggh. I'm just not having any luck this week with enclosures.

Lol same here bro don’t feel bad and your creates will be in the mail Monday. We have had rain off and on for 5 days now so its been killing my humidity levels in the roach room. I had 3 colonies do the same thing yours did.

 

[TheRoachGuy]

well if you can wait till wensday when you get your flats ill toss in some screen for you. just let me know if you want it or not.

 

[LizMarie]

NY is the same. It rains like 5 days a week now.. It's been like this for what 3 weeks now? I'm starting to get annoyed!

Oh what a surprise it's raining now!

Hopefully my roaches will make it through the storm. Problem is *being brave* because they still kind of gross me out, lol. Having to get them out of those crate is going to be fantastic .

 

[LizMarie]

well if you can wait till wensday when you get your flats ill toss in some screen for you. just let me know if you want it or not.

:main_yes: I can wait until weds.

 

[TheRoachGuy]

Will do Liz ill hook you up with two pieces so you can add a second vent to it if need be.
Take care liz and have yourself a great weekend what’s left of it.

 

[Pepper]

I just had to clean both my bins as I had a mold problem...the roaches didn't seem to be affected by it, but the smell was horrible(can't smell, but all my friends were like..O_O), and obviously mold is not a good thing...I think I was worried about not having enough humidity as Alaska has 0 humidity...but now I think it's too low..ugg.

What I did was...

Take an extra tote, I used an extra 10 gallon. I lifted all the egg crates out with the roaches(did this outside) and put them all in the 10 gallon. Put all the frass and egg cases in to a separate container. Cleaned the roach tub. Shook out the egg cartons the roaches where on in the 10 gallon. Threw them away. Put fresh egg cartons in the 10 gallon, waited for them to all get on them(like 5 minutes) and stuck them back in the clean tote.

Easier than cleaning cricket containers, because when you lift up the egg cartons, the roaches all don't jump out...they just cling to the egg carton haha.

 

[LizMarie]

Thanks Jason I received the package yesturday. Last night my mother's friend helped me remove all the roaches into a clear bin so I could take inventory and I have roughly 12 males and 4-5 females, ugh! But the good news is I had like 50 babies running around so they're breeding. It took forever to get the smell out of the plastic and I had scrub away the frask that had gotten wet because it was stuck to the bottom but I am happy to say that everything is CLEAN! and with the paper egg crates there is at least a 4-5inch distance between the water crystals and the egg crates.

They should be happy the temps are roughly 95 degrees coming from under the egg crates, 2 petri dishes full of a mix of cat and dog food, a lid of water crystals and half a carrot which is almost gone!