The effects of high humidity on B. Dubia.

[BG]

You are very lucky. Try to beat this .I did the same as you. The only deference is that i went away for a week on vacation. I came back to 5000 dead roaches maggots flies. you name it and the smell in the bin was horrible. The ammonia level was 150%. I had to throw out the whole bin. thank God i had other colonies.

[Sublime]

R.I.P dubias . Yeah, you're lucky it was only 20. That's strange that the humidity got up that high even with what you did. Lesson learned for all of us, thanks for sharing.

Do you think there was excessive amounts of moisture in the bathroom, besides all the other moisture that was already in there that caused it to get that high?

[MonsterPyxie]

You are very lucky. Try to beat this .I did the same as you. The only deference is that i went away for a week on vacation. I came back to 5000 dead roaches maggots flies. you name it and the smell in the bin was horrible. The ammonia level was 150%. I had to throw out the whole bin. thank God i had other colonies.

yea I remember your story, didn't know it was 5,000 roaches, jebus! that had to have been one hell of a smell!

R.I.P dubias . Yeah, you're lucky it was only 20. That's strange that the humidity got up that high even with what you did. Lesson learned for all of us, thanks for sharing.

Do you think there was excessive amounts of moisture in the bathroom, besides all the other moisture that was already in there that caused it to get that high?

I think its just the limited ventilation, just that watercrystal, about double what i normally add, and that fruit did it. I've decided I will add more ventilation, even though that means I will have to mist them probably twice a day.

Last night after changing the bin, no one was in that bathroom until in the morning, my wife showered, then gave my son a bath. Even with us showering in there, the humidity is void in about 30min afterward. my house stays around 10-20% humidity, and with me heating the bathroom, it burn's up the humidity also. so i don't think that was a factor. Hasn't been since we started keeping them in there.

moving forward I will soon be building a rack to keep my roaches. Already starting to draw up some plans. rack will have heat on the bottom and sides, and I will be buying a higher end controller/rheostat that you can program for daytime/nighttime temps, and has alarms if temp or humidity are too high/low. (its about 375 bucks last time i looked)

rack will come soon, trying to get these guys organized. Expensive *** controller/rheostat will wait until I have extra cash laying around to blow, lol.

[JeffreH]

Poor roachies D=

I'm sorry this happened to you, Rob. Glad you are staying positive about it - like you said, at least you caught it early.

Quick question: Have you actually monitored humidity within the bins? Despite your house being so low, even with ventilation the bin can be such a controlled environment that a small dish of water crystals above the heat source can really crank out a decent amount. Did you note obvious molting issues before adopting the plan to increase humidity? Not questioning you (you house is one of the driest I've ever heard of, lol!) just curious.

A substrate may help you as well - kind of makes digging out some smaller nymphs a pain in the rear, but I've had success rearing this species with coir based substrate.

[MonsterPyxie]

Poor roachies D=

I'm sorry this happened to you, Rob. Glad you are staying positive about it - like you said, at least you caught it early.

Quick question: Have you actually monitored humidity within the bins? Despite your house being so low, even with ventilation the bin can be such a controlled environment that a small dish of water crystals above the heat source can really crank out a decent amount. Did you note obvious molting issues before adopting the plan to increase humidity? Not questioning you (you house is one of the driest I've ever heard of, lol!) just curious.

A substrate may help you as well - kind of makes digging out some smaller nymphs a pain in the rear, but I've had success rearing this species with coir based substrate.

Thanks for replying Jeff, was looking forward to your thoughts.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that when I get home from work in about 2 and a half hours that i don't have more dead roaches. So we shall see.

I have a cheap walmart outdoor gauges I keep in all my bins, I have put my $15 reptile gauge next to the $2 walmart, and they read the same, so I bought a few more.

The gauge is laid on the bottom of the bin, so its at there level, with the meter, or whatever it is that picks up the humidity, facing upward, (so its not pinned to the bottom of the bin, giving bad readings)


the 10% humidity in my house surprised me even. I had the gauge out on my desk after buying 2 more of them, and grabbed it to go put it in the roach bin, and was like Whites Tree Frog 10%? thats the same one I tested in the roach bin, compared to the $15 reptile specific gauge. I consider is moderately accurate. for the price, compared to the $15 reptile specific ones that it's as accurate as, I dig 'em.


substrate is not going to work for me right now. I'm trying out this new method of removing the babies from the adults every month, to give the more room, and according to a good breeder, its supposed to ramp up the production a bit. Hard enough already to separate the babies now, substrate would make it a nightmare!



Before I had the fruit and watercrystal getting the humidity up. When there wasn't fruit, I would have to mist once a day, but with something like a banana, they stayed at 60-65%. I have a very small amount of watercrystal, around a handful in there, and thats the norm. so I effectively doubled the normal amount of watercrystal, which was freshly "made" so it was probably overly wet too.

I didn't intend to raise the humidity, just was tired, and didn't put enough thought into it that the extra handful of water crystal, with the fruit and stuff in there, would have such a huge effect. the entire room is heated to 90 degrees or so, so the entire bin stays around that temp.

[MonsterPyxie]

update.

all seem's well. I found 3 more dead, but they where not all squishy like the others. Humidity was still high at 70% when I got home, but when I got up around 1pm after my nap, its at 65%. So I went ahead and added a mix of kale and baby carrots blended together. They devour this mix, but hopefully it doesn't spike the humidity.

[JeffreH]

Good to hear that losses weren't too significant; thank goodness you were able to address the problem promptly before it got out of hand! It sounds like you know exactly what went wrong and were proactive about fixing it... I guess to think optimistically, this little trial and error has helped to realize the limits of what you can offer them given your situation.

I do feel your pain though - I had tryed playing around with a chick-waterer to provide moisture to my Orange Heads. Unfortunately, the thing overflowed and flooded the entire bin... out of those that survived, the hypopigmented individuals became cannibalized and the colony decayed to about 1/4 its initial size.


Also - I've contemplated over and over separating sizes, I just don't feel like adding additional bins to my already crowded feeder rack area to rear various sized nymphs. Not going to lie; it would make things much easier come feed time though... Might adopt this strategy at some point. Let me know how it works for you = )