Yeah I know what you mean; their body structure and color is starting to show their age... I'll look out for young ones dying, none of them have died yet from what I've seen.

Might be worth it to get a fresh batch in to mix it up and those oranges do make them look 5x better than just the standard 'black' roach. This isn't a big concern to me because I'm just trying to get a colony started lol. For you though, I could see you wanting to do that. Plus, it's just good business - a lot more appealing.

Thanks for that advice on the heating, the infrared thermometer gun I use I think is off by 4 degrees (elevated). I'll work on adjusting the rheostat down to your preferred range. I just thought I was having a heating issue problem when I wasn't seeing results, so I turned it up even higher. Yeah that's the good thing about stacking egg flats vertical in their as opposed to horizontal. The frass falling down for the babies to eat, easier to clean, and thermoregulating where the heat dissipates or moving closer to the heat source. That does make sense about them aging at a much higher pace due to the intense heat. Alright sounds good, I'll taper down the heat little by little to get back to the optimum range so that it doesn't cause drastic changes in temperature for them.

Yeah I'm hoping the death rate slows down and I got some younger adults in the mix...

Thanks, I try to take care of them to the best I can do... The reasoning for why I never add supplements into the diet of my feeder insects anyways is the crickets die off quicker in their life cycle if they excessively are taking in calcium into their diets. Those commercial cricket gutloads are a great example of too much calcium. They need higher protein in their diet, not calcium. That's all done by dusting . This diet is for my crickets and roaches, everything has worked out fine with it. I might down the road add like powdered skim milk and tropical fish flakes, but there's already enough in the blend as it is.

They should settle in fine now that I'm on a better routine for them that seems to be working smoothly. I'll keep you guys posted, sure. Thanks.

Replied to your pm .