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As some of you know because of my previous post I have a recently started colony of not dubias but orange head roaches or eublaberus posticus (which are better in so many ways) and I'll be ordering more tomorrow. I had 38 but I'm now down to 37 because a few minutes ago I found one on his back so I flipped him back over and he was extremely sluggish and not walking right. I was surprised but I figured he was dying and I wanted to put him out of his misery if he was in any so my beardie quickly ended his suffering and took care of him. I'm trying not to feed out of the colony until we reach a few hundred so now I'm thinking should I have done that because was he actually dying or was he just trying to molt because i've had at least 3 molting nymphs lately even though this one was an adult. Do they molt on their backs? Does anyone know? Tarantulas do and tarantulas are fellow arthropods. Well anyway if we was dying I can't think of any real reason except for maybe it was just his time. I mean the tank is large and spacious, running about 78-92 degrees at any given time but hovering around 85. They get enough food and there's lots of water gel cubes in there for drinking and humidity. I always clean out any fruit or vegetables they haven't eaten after a few days so he couldn't have been sick from any mold. The only things I can possibly think of that could have brought him to death's door are when the temperature dropped down to 73 and I quickly fixed the problem but that was days ago and the rest of the colony is thriving and happy. The other thing could be a tiny amount of raw hamburger I gave them last week since orange heads are slightly more carnivorous than other roaches but I don't think they get food poisoning and again that was several days ago with no ill effects to the rest of them. They all seem healthy and I would imagine they'll start having nymphs within a few weeks but I don't want to lose any more at this critical early stage with low starting numbers.
