mixing roaches?

[sajane]

Now what do I do? I ordered dubia roaches on line, as i was throwing the boxes away i noticed that 1 box said orange head roaches and 1 box said dubia roaches! I mixed them up together and i would never be able to I .D. them to separate. Will they be ok together?

[JeffreH]

They will be okay together temporarily but you will need to separate them; the orange heads are a fairly voracious species (for roaches) and will consume the B. dubia newborn nymphs and the freshly molted individuals. They do not play well with other roaches aside from their own species and will cannibalize foreign species of insect.

With practice you will be able to identify each species - the adults will be quite obvious and the nymphs are easy to distinguish when you've seen a few of them. Smaller orange head nymphs will be slightly oblong in shape and be brown with a hint of maroon, and medium to large nymphs with be quite 'pudgy' compared to dubia and have a beautiful maroon coloration. Dubia nymphs are all fairly uniform in appearance and color being brown and having a more distinct head.

I had posted picture comparison of nymphs in this thread; all of the pictures are of Orange Heads aside from the first photo that is comparing a single orange head nymph to several B. dubia:
http://www.frogforum.net/food-feeder...n-roaches.html

[sajane]

I had orderd dubias . When they came yesterday I knew they did not look like dubias, so my post re; the differences. I did not realize the other box contained the dubias! I only ordered 1 box but they must have had a shipping mix up. My 1st time dealing or looking at roaches.

[Beardo]

Eventually you will have nothing but Orange Heads......they are one of the only roach species out there that are actively carnivorous. I used to have a large colony of them and they would eat crickets regularly.

[sajane]

I 'm pretty sure I separated them all last night. I may have missed a few. I didnt even want the orange heads, they were sent by mistake. The adults are beautiful though, I put 8 of them in a 12x12x18 exo planted terrarium.