Getting into the roach hobby can be intimidating, but you'll quickly discover just how easy it is. There are plenty of hardy species on the market for beginners. In this guide, I'll teach you all you need to know without overwhelming you. My goal is to make you understand all of the elements of roach keeping so that you are confident with your husbandry, as simply as I can. Going forward, there will be more guides that go into greater detail about each element.
The parameters for a roach enclosure are as follows:
1. Enclosure size
2. Enclosure shape
3. Ventilation
4. Substrate
5. Decor
This guide will use dubia roaches as the example specimen for our build. My hope is that you will be able to create your own build according to your species' needs based off the information provided.
Step 1: Get the Right Size
The size of your enclosure depends on how many roaches you have. A starter colony usually consists of 10-12 individuals, all of which being immature. Here's a guide on roach quantity to suggested container size, but please understand and that these are guesstimates and may not suit your specific quantity/species:
10~ small nymphs: 1 quart
10~ medium nymphs: 3-4 quarts
2 mature adults: 5 quarts
15-20~ small nymphs: 3-5 quarts
15-20~ medium nymphs: 8-12 quarts
20-30~ small nymphs: 7-10 quarts
25-30~ medium nymphs: 11-20 quarts
30+ small nymphs: 14-20 quarts
30+ medium: 20+ quarts
The above list is a rough guide. Your specific species may need more space than others as some species are more territorial than others, so please take that into consideration. For example, if you have 10 small B. dubia nymphs, you can safely place them in a 1 quart container, but if you have 10 small B. cranniifer nymphs, you ought to increase that to a 3 or 4 quart container, as these are more 'pushy' with one another than B. dubia so will need the extra room to comfortably molt. Essentially, if it looks too cramped to you, it probably is. Use your best judgement.
My group of B. dubia "Amber" have gone from small to medium sized nymphs, so I need to upgrade their enclosure. I previously housed them in a 3 qt container and am now using what I believe to be a 7.5/8 qt bin. This is the standard size I use for all of my starter colonies. I'm a really big fan of this Sterilite storage container.
I
got it from my local dollar store for roughly $7. For a completely
budget-friendly build, I recommend finding an empty plastic container in
your house that matches your size requirements. Containers such as
yogurt tubs, snack containers, take-home food containers, etc,. If you
think it will work, use it. Glass containers can also be used, but
creating ventilation for those will be harder.
Step 2: Ensure the Type is Right
The type of container we use will be based upon the characteristics of our roach species. Since we're rehousing B. dubia, a species that does not climb smooth surfaces at any life stage, it's safe for us to use any material for our enclosure. They're also a terrestrial species, and nymphs like to burrow, so I made sure the shape of my enclosure is deep so they have room to burrow and long so they can walk around. I can make the substrate as deep as I'd like since I don't have to worry about the shortened distance from the top of the substrate to the top of the container because they can't climb the plastic walls. If they could, I'd want to set a reasonable distance to minimize chance of escape.
Step 3: Ventilation
Possibly the most important step of enclosure making. Ventilation has to be a balance between escape prevention and airflow. You can make holes larger to increase airflow while covering them with a fine mesh fabric to prevent escapees, or you can make a bunch of holes for high airflow that are small enough to prevent escapees. Airflow plays two roles: allowing the roaches to breathe and keeping airborne contaminants moving to decrease the chances of infestations.The challenge comes when you have a humidity-dependent species, because now you have to add humidity level to the balance mix. The best type of ventilation for humidity-dependent species is cross-ventilation. It's pretty self-explanatory. Essentially one side of the enclosure has ventilation that matches on the opposite side, making the vents parallel to one another. I use cross-ventilation whether my species is tropical or not because cross-ventilation just works really well, so that's what I'll be doing for these B. dubia "Ambers" .
Tools you can use to create ventilation:
Everyone has their own way of making ventilation. You can use any tool you can access so long as it does the job easily and safely. Do not use scissors to cut holes into thick material; do not try to cut material with a knife; do not heat-up the end of a sharp metal with a lighter to try and penetrate material... trust me, I've tried all of these. It's not even worth it because the ventilation holes are never cleanly cut. If your tool isn't easily or safely penetrating the material, please don't do it.Take your time and think of a safe way to create ventilation.
If you're on a budget, you can use a sharp house-hold object such as a tooth-pick or a threading needle for thin plastics, rotating the tool in a circular motion while it's in to increase the diameter of the hole. For thick plastics, you'll need something that can safely receive human-generated force, like a nail with a hammer.
If you can spare some money, the two best tools I know of to create ventilation is a soldering iron and a drill. Each has their pros and cons:
- Soldering iron: Inexpensive and easy to use, but there's an airborne particle hazard. You MUST wear a particle-filtering mask or be in a ventilated environment such as outside in order to safely use this tool.
- Drill: No breathing hazards and more precise, consistent hole sizes, but it's not inexpensive and creates a mess of shaved material.
I personally use a soldering iron with a 3M particle-filtering mask and my bedroom windows open. I work with plastic so I really do not want micro-plastics filling my lungs.
If you decided to go down the glass container route, I unfortunately don't have any recommendations on how to ventilate that, so you'll have to get creative.
I made a ton of very tiny holes, roughly 1mm or less in size, because B. dubia nymphs are very, very small when first hatched. I then added a few larger holes at the very top to increase airflow. It wasn't until after I made this ventilation plan that I realized it was unnecessary - none of the nymphs were small enough to escape holes of that size so it was unnecessary to make them that small.. I also realized the amount of holes I made was too much - I could have given them a deeper substrate if I didn't make so many holes. But hindsight is 20/20 and we learn by doing.
So anyway, I did this for both sides of the bin. The holes are small enough to maintain some moisture and there's enough for the roaches to breathe.
Step 4: Substrate
Coconut fiber is the most common, reliable and beginner friendly substrate. I use it for all of my roaches. You may see advertisements online telling you coconut fiber is 'cheap' substrate that's unsuitable for any animal keeping because it isn't 'pure', but this is simply not true. These substrate-making brands may be correct in their statement that coconut fiber is not fully made of all organic substances/materials, but there's no evidence to support these 'impurities' negatively effect the animal's quality of life. Cockroaches can thrive in coconut fiber. They breed and grow in it just fine. The invertebrate-keeping community is still in it's infancy so we cannot say any one type or mix of substrate is perfectly suitable. If what you are using does not harm your animals, do not let advertisers guilt you into buying whatever they are selling.
With
that being said, I do recommend filtering your coconut fiber with a
coriander/drainer to get all of the loose hairs out. The hairs are
rather rough in texture and may irritate your roaches when they're
molting, but I have not observed this happening to say definitively that
it does - I just do it as a precaution (and because I find them
visually unappealing).
So here you can see I've filled the bin up to the desired depth. Pretty simple stuff.
Then
I moisturize one side to create a humidity gradient. This isn't
required for B. dubia, but there's no harm and all benefits in doing it.
Moisture assists in healthy molting. You can see the moisture is on the left side in the image.
Step 4: Decor
The last step is adding decor. If you get creative you can make it both practical and decorative. I decided to go for a 'cave' aesthetic and I maximized space by stacking two pieces of cork bark on top of one another to make two caves. Then I sprinkled in some leaf litter and more cork pieces.
What's funny but not funny is that days later I saw that they absolutely destroyed the cave structure (totally collapsed). That's the last time I try to do something nice for them..
ANYWAY; your bin should be complete now. You may now introduce your roaches! Hopefully they flourish in it. If not, take the time to observe them and make changes accordingly. Your enclosure won't be perfect the first time you set it up - even for veteran enclosure-makers. You'll want to add and take things away with time, or you may end up making an entirely new enclosure.
As a beginner, it's okay to not have the best setup for your roach. Guides are just that - they guide you in the right direction, but it takes actually doing the project to understand what works and what doesn't work. Veteran roach keepers experiment all the time with different setups; they're not always doing the same thing every time. Take your time, don't panic, and do what you think will work. If it doesn't work, try something else.
If you really want to experiment to see what works try divvying up your colony into separate enclosures with different substrates, ventilation, humidity, etc,.
I hope this beginner guide helped you! There will be more in the future. :)
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