How to Choose a Roach Bin Lid Screen 8 Jul 2021, 9:20 pm

Choosing the proper ventilation solution for your feeder Discoid roach bin is a surprisingly complex task. There are many options, and you are likely to choose the wrong solution at least once. In today’s post I will discuss some of the options that we here at Wholesale Roaches have tried, what has worked, what didn’t work, and finally what are my thoughts on each ventilation solutions.

First, let us establish the purpose of a ventilation solution. In my mind there are four main objectives you are attempting to achieve: Containment, Moisture, Defense and Air Movement.

• Containment: This is the number one thing on any new enthusiast’s mind; however, it is the least import factor when choosing the proper ventilation solution. Your bin selection will be far more important for containment than lids, screens, and vents.
• Moisture: Maintaining the proper humidity level inside of your Discoid feeder bin is a very important aspect of Cockroach care. Too low or too high will result in under production, mold growth, bad molts, and large die offs. The general health and appearance of your roaches will also suffer.
• Defense: Keeping predators and bugs out of your bugs is the second highest priority for your ventilation system. You should have other measures in place to keep your roaches safe, but your final line of defense is your lid, screen, and vents.
• Air Movement: Having well circulated fresh air is vital to the success of your roach bin. Having poor air circulation leads to stagnant dirty air and all the pitfalls of too high or too low of moisture.

Now we know what we want to do, but how? There is a near infinite number of creative solutions to achieve these goals. What you use will come down to availability and results but the commonly used methods are Holes, Vents, Open Air, and Screens.

• Holes: The simplest method is to pierce the lid and/or sides of your feeder or breeder roach bin using a drill, heated implement, or something sharp combined with brute force. How big and how many will be a game of trial and error. Start with few and continue adding more every couple of weeks until you achieve your desired results. The bigger the hole the fewer holes you will need and of course the inverse is true as well. Keep in mind that you can always make a hole bigger, but it is difficult to affectively shrink a hole. There are some major drawbacks to this method. First being that it is permanent. Once you make the hole it is there. Sure, you can tape over it but that will be unsightly and, more annoyingly, the tape will fall off constantly. Your best option if this occurs is to use aquarium safe silicone, or some good ole hot glue, to seal the hole. You will also not achieve defense since any sized hole using this method will allow just about any bug out there to enter your feeder discoid roach bin. Containment will also not be achieved. If you make your holes too low or if you choose the wrong bin to use for your discoid nymphs, particularly newborns and cleaner bugs, will walk right out a hole as small as 1/8 inch.If you have a need for a quick or temporary setup, a simple Discoid feeder roach bin setup, or a personal Discoid breeder roach bin this is a viable option. If you are wanting to breed volume, I would not use this as my ventilation solution.

• Vents: A very popular choice, especially when stacking bins, is vents. They come in a wide range of designs and styles made mostly out of aluminum or plastic. There are freely available STL files for those of you that can 3d print. Vents follow the same parameters as holes, but they are a viable option for volume breeding. If you are purchasing from a vendor, I would look for one of the kits that comes with a mesh filter to keep smaller bugs out. It is best to use vents on the sides of your roach bin as they tend to pop out easily when placed in the lid due to the constant flexing. I found it difficult to maintain proper airflow when I tested vents which led to high moisture problems. I do not think my experience is the norm though and it may be worth a go if you stack your bins or if you are having problems with retaining moisture.

• Open Air: leaving your bin completely open without a lid or other barrier is another option. Wholesale Roaches uses this method on the majority of our Discoid feeder roach bins. This open-air method is a bit more advanced and will require you to be more attentive to your roach bins than any other method. The only inherent benefits of an open-air bin is air flow and accessibility. Without any form of barrier, you allow for moisture to escape rapidly, containment is achieved only by bin selection and finally you have no defense against infesting pests and predators. However, if you are dealing with large volume breeding or feeding where you are frequently in and out of bins or rehousing this is the most efficient method in my opinion.
• Screens: The de facto choice for any roach bin is a screen and with good reason; screens meet all the criteria we outlined with the only drawback being how to adhere your screen to your bin or lid. This is a major drawback though. If your screen comes loose, it will provide the perfect vector for your roaches to escape or an invasion to begin. You also must choose the proper screen which we discussed in the following video:

https://youtu.be/wXzebfFTxXgAs you can see, there are many solutions available to you and these are just the most common. It takes time, frustration, trial and error to find the right solution for you, but it is worth the effort. A well-ventilated secure roach bin makes everyone a whole lot happier.
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Wholesale Roaches – How it Began 8 Jul 2021, 1:40 am

Wholesale Roaches was founded to meet the market demand for quality, abundantly available, affordable Blaberus discoidalis (Discoid) roaches.

How does one become a cockroach farmer? What depraved and twisted life leads someone to hoard bins full of 1000s of very large cockroaches? For me it started with a seemingly harmless question “Hey baby can I get a Tarantula?”. Although my wife looked at me like I was crazy, after a bit of lobbying I was granted permission… Six months and 37 Tarantulas later I had to figure out how to reasonably feed my growing collection.

As most do, I started with crickets. I took a dislike to crickets rather quickly due to them being prone to early death and horrible odor. This had me running to the pet store before every feeding to ensure fresh feeder crickets. Next on the list was meal worms. I had the perfect storm of a very tiny sling going into molt and a hidden meal worm that had turned into a darkling… the tarantula lost the exchange, and that incident abruptly ended my use of meal worms. This brought me to wax worms. They were cheap, readily available, easy to store…They were perfect! That was until I discovered the rancid smell of a wax worm left past 24 hours. What options did I have? What do other people do? For the short term I went back to crickets and my search for the perfect feeder began.

The internet was full of suggestions and possibilities. It quicky became apparent that the preferred choice feeder is cockroaches. Mostly Shelfordella lateralis (Turkestan, Red Runner, Rusty Red, Red Lat) and Blaptica dubia (Dubia, Orange-spotted roach, Tropical Spotted Roach, Guyana spotted roach, Argentinian wood roach). NOPE!! NOT A CHANCE!! The thought of cockroaches was repulsive. The thought of having a single cockroach in my house literally churned my stomach. However, the data was impossible to ignore. I could find no other readily available feeder that beats both the nutritional profile and ease of care as roaches.

Okay, deep breath, let’s give it a try. I placed my order for 50 Dubia roaches for $15 and waited patiently for them to arrive. Two weeks later nothing. I contacted the vendor and they said they could not ship to me because I live in Florida. They had not communicated this to me nor refunded me. They simply took my money and waited to see if I would ever ask for a refund. They told me about Discoid feeder roaches but they also told me they were sold out, and that was the story everywhere. Apparently “Sold Out” is the number one product for discoid breeders. I turned to local pet stores and reptile shops: Sold out, Sold out, Sold out. About two weeks into my search, I had a friend that was able to pick up a container of 15 nymphs for me from a local store. I finally had the unicorn Discoid cockroach in my hands, well, in a container in my hands anyway. I attempted my first feeding and nothing. It was a bust. I dropped the roach in, the T jumped about as much as I did when the roach attempted to crawl on my hand and then the roach buried itself. WTF! I was determined to figure this out. I went to Google and YouTube for how to get this done and by the time the container was finished I had a good handle on the process. The problem was I only had half my critters fed and no Discoid roach supply available for more, so back to crickets I went.

During the next couple of months, a container here or there of Discoids would become available and I would snag them immediately. Supply was not the only vexing point. Paying around a buck each for a cockroach was leaving a sour taste in my mouth, figuratively of course, so I decided to breed my own.

Acquiring breeder Discoid roaches is an adventure I will leave for another post, but we have spent a year acquiring every breeder colony we could and let them do their thing, breed like roaches! This has led to a building full of high-quality food for my Ts and a new business. I bet my wife sure wishes she had said no!

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