Well, I waited several months, and basically got fed up with buying crickets. I mean, crickets smell awful...
I bought about 1,000 nymphs and about 2,000 of varying sizes, and I've done really well at keeping them as breeders only. Although, there have been a few times that I've had to use the adults in the colony as feeders when I was out of crickets and waiting for a reptile show to buy more.
These roaches make great feeder roaches, as they are smaller than dubia and discoid roaches. Plus, geckos seem to like them because their outer skeleton isn't has hard as dubia or discoid roaches.
The one bad thing is that they are super fast. I've found that most of my leopard geckos love the chase.
I like using lateralis roaches because they are easy to breed and they don't get too big. I don't have to worry about carefully selecting any particular size to feed off. When I bred dubia roaches for my geckos, I ended up feeding off smaller nymphs and juvenile roaches before they would get big enough to breed.
With lateralis, all you need is a storage tote and some egg cartons. I cut the center out of the storage tote and hot glued a screen into the opening so that there would be plenty of ventilation.
I use a high quality cricket feed and various fruits and vegetables. I have found that lateralis roaches love pears. I wait until the pears get overly ripe, slice it up, and put it in the bin. I have heard that they like plums, as well. I haven't had too much luck with carrots or potatoes, but they'll eat them if nothing is available, just not as readily as juicier fruits.
If you pull them out, you can either leave them at room temperature or place them in an incubator at about 75F.
If you leave the egg cases in the tubs, just mist the surface about once a day.
I've tried both methods, and they both work about the same. I did have a problem in the incubator when I left baby roaches in there too long (I didn't realized any had hatched), and they died.
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| Lateralis Egg Sack |
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