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Sorting Roaches

MEReptiles

MEReptiles

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I have a colony of dubia roaches and I was wanting to know how does everyone clean them and sort them.
I seen people use sifters but for some reason I can't get it to work so I was looking for ideas. Maybe if some of you could post pictures of the things you use to clean and sort them.

Thanks...
 
Cleaning and sorting

For cleaning we have just taken all the roaches we can out. For the ones too small to bother with we take out all the larger roaches and larger nymphs. We then take the frass and skin molts, which are our only substrate and pour it into another container.

We feed regularly and pick out the nymphs as they get large enough to see. As for sorting, refrigerating for a short time slows down roaches making them more tractable. Thus making them easier to sift through. Probably the easiest and most effective way however is to move the adults to new bins on a regualr basis, depending on how exact you need the sizes to be. Such as every two weeks or every month. By moving the adults, the nymphs in the tubs are all around the same age and size and you know how old the nymphs in any given tub are.

Digby Rigby [email protected]
 
Thanks. I just been keeping them all in two tubs and really need to start sorting them out a little better.
 
If you want the smallest nymphs I've had a little luck with taking a deli cup with holes melted just large enough for them to crawl through and putting food in there. I come back an hour or so later and its filled with the smallest nymphs. Obviously it won't work for larger ones as you will still get all the smaller ones in there as well.
 
One of my friends had a great idea for this...though, I'm not sure it would work with Dubias since I don't know if they tolerate vaseline or not. (We have hissers, which won't cross vaseline.)

Anyway, he first picked out all the adults/big roaches and put them in the new/clean container. He then took a small jar, put food in it, lined the mouth with vaseline, and put it down into the substrate so the mouth of the jar was even with the substrate (i.e. a pit trap). The nymphs fall in, but they can't get out due to the vaseline barrier. Ta da! He had great success with this.
 
Thanks for the ideas.
I actually thought about trying to use a shoe box tote and cutting the bottom out of it then take some hardware cloth of the needed size and melt it into the bottom of the tote.
Basically a thief (not sure if its actually spelled like that) for roaches. Since dubia roaches can't climb up smooth surfaces and don't fly the bigger ones would push the littler ones through the holes while the bigger ones won't fit. I'm hoping to try this out this weekend. I will let you know how it goes if I find time to do this.
 
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