know any good homemade feeder diets for roaches?

i'm currently using esu reptile gutload for my discoids but i was wondering if there is a good home-made diet i can make. i do give them quenchers calcium fortified gel and a carrot each day as well. i do have dog and cat food as well. thanks you for the info. i thought i saw a thread on this awhile back but i couldn't find it, probably skimmed right by it.

I also recently started a discoid colony. I grind up cat food in a blender, I then mix in vitamin and calcium powder. You can get fancy if you want and add anything from spirulina to dry milk. I've also read it is good to offer a variety off foods including ground up oats or cereal. For wet foods I offer them greens, carrots, and apples. I also keep calcium fortified gel in at all times. If you'd like I can email you a pdf I found online with a lot of info on discoids, Chris.

I use dry cat food for the basic meal and offer fresh greens (lots of broccoli and carrots too) and some fruits....they eat anything which makes it easy to feed them!

A little off topic but how long did it take you guys before your roaches started breeding? Particularly the discoid owners. I have 2 colonies of discoids and have been unsuccessful in getting them to breed. I have had them for about a month now and was just curious as to whether or not they should be reproducing yet.

i haven't had any bred yet but i have only had them for about 1 or so months. i read that they get mature at 3 months and can have up to 100 or so babies. i actually just got an order from wormman for 100 roaches of all sizes and i have a nice number of adults, so maybe i'll ge lucky and have it happen soon. of course i only have 3 geckos for this but i figured i'd save me money from ordering all the time. i can always sell off extra if it gets out of hand or just have to get more geckos.

Jessica I think you should just get more geckos!

Roaches aren't my bag of linen, however I have heard that they practically will eat anything!!

I started my roach colonies (orange-spotted and discoids) 2 months ago, some winged adults emerged 2-3 weeks ago, but I don't see any babies yet...so, I think you'll need to wait a little longer. For dry food, I mainly use puppy food, with cereals, grains and seeds to add variety; and for moisture, I offer apples, pears, pumpkin, and greens.

Rather than sticking with one food item, it's better to give them a variety. Crickets will eat whatever's in front of them, but roaches know how to regulate themselves nutritionally if you give them choices.

I read about a study that compared roach diets. The roaches that were given only high protein diets had the least successful reproduction rates, whereas the other groups were reluctant to eat protein when they had other options. The people ended up freeze-drying the roaches to analyze them. Even though they had different amounts of different types of food available, they all came out to be the same nutritionally, which implies that roaches know how to eat a balanced meal--if you let them. The ones that were allowed to eat a variety of grains and fruits/veggies in addition to protein were the most successful in breeding. If anyone's interested in reading more on this, let me know.

I think one of the things that make roaches superior to crickets and mealworms is that people are more mindful about what they feed them. There are a lot of folks who think just throwing in some oatmeal and carrots is enough to gutload crickets, but those are the very folks who start paying attention to gutload when they want to breed roaches.

Oops, so keeping in line with this gutload stuff, try to think in terms of what's healthy for the feeder, not necessarily what's healthy for your geckos. High calcium diets don't benefit insects because they don't really have a need for it. Too much calcium can actually kill them. The problem with high protein diets is that people usually offer dog or cat chow, which is also high in lipids. Insects don't really have a way to process lipids into monosaccharides.

So just stick with the variety thing. I generally keep a source of protein available at all times in addition to Cheerios. They get regular offerings of fresh sandwich bread, carrots, bananas, oranges, and whatever treats I come upon. I just recently found some old cornbread gone stale in the fridge, so my roaches got to feast on that too. Don't feel like you have to just stick to one particular kind of diet. Different species have different tastes, but they all generally enjoy coming across new types of food.