Roman's Roaches and More

26/04/2023

I've been waiting for this moment for awhile now... Hopefully Heather can help me with this!

16/02/2023

It’s almost time for the next reptile show! March 5th in Hastings, MN we will be vending the Wings, Tails and Scales all exotic pets expo!

Here is what we are planning on bringing to the show:

BOAS:
0.1 normal 100% het Kahl albino
0.2 motley 100% het Kahl albino
1.0 motley 100% het Kahl albino
0.1 motley hypo 100% het Kahl albino

INVERTEBRATES:
Dubia
Paratemnopteryx couloniana (red goblin roach)
Eurycotis floridana “Big Torch Key” (Florida skunk roach)
Fruit fly cultures (freshly made hydei and melanogaster)

PLANTS:
Spineless prickly pear cactus (can be fed to herbivores!)
Aloe
Bromeliads
Thanksgiving cactus
Purple Heart

MISCELLANEOUS:
1 gallon bags of live oak leaves
Palm bark
Palm flats

If there is something someone is looking for, let us know and we will do our best to either have it for you or find someone who does have it!

15/02/2023

I was contacted yesterday by the great Twin Cities Reptiles owners about a snake that had been abandoned for 4-8 months inside of a house not being taken care of. At first, the owner of the property said it might be a python but said that it was brown and black, had triangle patterns and was bigger than she was. Later on the property owner said it might be a red tail “python”.
It really could have been anything without seeing pictures but today I headed out to Burnsville to go get this snake assuming that it was neglected and assuming the worst on the condition of the animal.
As it turns out, she (assuming, I have not properly checked yet as I just got home) probably benefited some from not eating 😅. Either way, she is now in great hands. Thank you Sara for leading me to this!

11/01/2023

There is nothing quite like having a box of live oak leaves! We were fortunate enough to have received a large contractor bag full of these and we will start offering them at the shows we go to! They are wonderful for isopods, millipedes, bioactive setups, and much more! They are also much more firm than the pin and round oaks found here in the Midwest which is why we personally find live oak more attractive.

23/12/2022

After seeing some very disappointing feeder selections at some shows (our own selection included), we figured we better start getting more production and better selection out there! These cups will be used primarily for melanogaster fruit flies and roaches but we are hoping to find some bean beetles, hydei fruit flies, flour beetles and possibly other feeder insects to start culturing and offering at the shows we vend at! If there are feeder insects that you would like to see more of at reptile shows, leave us a comment or send us a message and we will do our best to make that happen!

20/12/2022

19/12/2022

Yesterday we vended at the Wings, Tails and Scales reptile show in Bloomington and had a great time!

First, we would like to thank everyone that came out and made the show fun! Without you guys, there wouldn’t be reptile shows or really a community that comes together to support breeders and the hobby itself.

Secondly, we would like to thank Biddy Bugs LLC for the isopods and Fire Belly Toads! We always appreciate them and their amazing selection of isopods, springtails and Fire Bellies.

Finally we would like to thank One Love Tarantulas for the Paratemnopteryx couloniana colony! These have been a long time favorite of ours due to their activity level and overall usability as feeders or as pets. One Love Tarantulas also had a great selection of tarantulas, some scorpions and true spiders!

We cannot wait for the Fire Bellies to grow up and we are excited to see them interact with each other as a communal group! We also cannot wait to see everyone again at the Hastings show in March!

12/12/2022

Is everyone ready for the Bloomington reptile show this Sunday? We will be there ready to help you find the right pet, right feeder or gift! We will have a variety of roaches, boas, corn snakes and some plants!
We will have:

Roaches:
Deropeltis paulinoi (ornate velvet roach)
Eurycotis floridana ”Big Torch Key” (Florida skunk roach)
Blaptica dubia (dubia roach)

Boas:
Motley 100% het Kahl albino
Hypo motley 100% het Kahl albino
Normal 100% het Kahl albino

Corn snakes:
Normal 100% het scaleless
Okeetee 100% het scaleless

Plants:
Spineless prickly pear (great for tortoises!)
Christmas cactus
Aloe
Pothos
Bromeliads
Purple Heart

Also, we will have someone to take custom artwork requests (for after the holiday season) of your animals!

10/11/2022

A lot has happened since Saturday last weekend!
To start off, we would like to thank Biddy Bugs LLC for the amazing selection of isopods and mourning geckos! We look forward to raising and breeding everything but we are really excited for the mourning gecko group we got! We need to get pictures of everyone but that will have to wait until they get more established in their new homes.
We also thank our friend, Brad Baysinger for an amazing customized snake hook and a beautiful breeding pair of Morelia bredli (we need to get pictures of them as well). We realized after selling off the ball pythons, we don’t have any egg layers to put our incubator to use so we thought the bredli pythons would be a perfect fit!
Next and finally, we thank Magnificent Beasts for these amazing roaches pictured below! They had sent us healthy groups of Compsodes schwarzi (one of the smallest roaches currently kept by roach hobbyists in the U.S.) and Deropeltis paulinoi. We hope to create 3-5 master colonies of schwarzi and 1-2 master colonies of paulinoi so we can start offering those species to people as well.
Half of the Compsodes schwarzi went into the mourning gecko enclosure as schwarzi are a dwarf species of roach and mourning geckos are a dwarf gecko. We hope the roaches start breeding in with the mourning geckos so the mourning geckos are able to eat them and forage for them as they would naturally. The other half went into their own tub to culture in case they do not thrive in the mourning gecko enclosure.
Check out just how small these schwarzi really are! The end of the standard sized sharpie is an adult! I also cannot wait for the paulinoi males to mature as they are the only s*x to have longer, wasp like wings!

05/11/2022

As the warm months start cooling down, the colonies of roaches start growing! Cold weather is not ideal for shipping roaches or other invertebrates out due to the risk of freezing.
This winter, we will be keeping all roaches except for ones we bring to shows and sell locally in hopes to make more colonies for the shipping season. We hope to make one new colony of Periplaneta americana, Eurycotis floridana ”Big Torch Key” and hopefully 2 more colonies of dubia!
The last picture is of the grow out bin. It doesn’t look like much but there are probably around 3,000-5,000 nymphs and adult males in there. We want to make 5 total master colonies of dubia consisting of at least 500 females and 100 males.

28/10/2022

Periplaneta americana are super fun to keep but also super stressful at the same time. They are fun because they are quick, they are out and about more than most species We’ve ever worked with and are just eating machines. They are quite stressful because they are quick, everything from 4th instar and older can climb exceptionally well and both males and females are winged making it harder to s*x them.
They do, however, make exceptional feeders for animals that need more movement than dubia generally provide. As mentioned, 1st instar through 3rd instar cannot climb smooth surfaces which makes life a lot easier when choosing how to ventilate the enclosure they are in. The new born nymphs are also about the size, if not smaller, of a pin head cricket making them ideal feeders for small animals. Note that in the first picture, inside of the dish you can see 3 1st instar nymphs. We had to place a piece of egg carton inside of the dish otherwise those nymphs would surely be stuck inside.
They also reproduce and grow quickly making them ideal for us to use as a staple feeder.

26/10/2022

Sunday at the exotic pet expo was a success! We were able to sell a few plants, rats and reptiles as well as add to our family!
Before the show, we were able to pick up quite the load of dubia roaches so we can start breeding feeders to sell at shows regularly! As many of you that know us, we truly love our roaches and try to either have what people are looking for or at least a reliable source for them.
We were after one particular gecko species but ended up with two and we cannot complain about it! Mourning geckos (the super small geckos pictured next to the end of a sharpie) were the target species as we had purchased 4 eco-25 gallon PVC enclosures from Snake Discovery a while back with the mindset of using them for a small species such as mourning geckos in a bio active setup. The awesome thing about mourning geckos is that they reproduce through parthenogenesis which means they are all female and reproduce as*xually!
The giant day geckos were a bonus for us as we were not expecting to add them to our reptile home. It is a s*xed pair so hopefully in the future, we will have day geckos available!
We also did an amazing trade with Biddy Bugs LLC and got 3 species of isopods! I cannot thank them enough over there and hope to continue working with them. They have some amazing isopods at a good price and always with a smile!
Today, we picked up a group of Egyptian spiny mice to start breeding and hopefully next year start offering them at shows as well! They aren’t as commonly available and we see a future with them being that they don’t generally smell nearly as bad as rats or mice that are typically available do.
We also picked up this female blue tongue skink! We are hoping to work with her more regularly to calm her down a bit to bring to schools for educational purposes and possibly find her a mate in the future. But for now, she is our grumpy, small legged, thick bodied reptile friend!

We will also be vending the reptile show in Eau Claire, Wisconsin on November 6th so if anyone has a need for feeder rodents, boas, corn snakes, roaches or anything else, let us know so we can help you out!

20/10/2022

With the exotic pet fair in Hastings, MN happening in 3 days (Sunday the 23rd), we figured we better give an idea of what we will be bringing!

SNAKES:

0.1 adult okeetee 100% het scaleless corn snake
0.2 juvenile normal het scaleless corn snake

1.0 hypo 100% het albino (Kahl)
0.1 hypo motley 100% het albino (Kahl)
1.1 motley 100% het albino (Kahl)
0.1 normal 100% het albino (Kahl)

LIZARDS:

0.2 tegu (black & white and blue/black & white)

RODENTS:

Weaned to adult rats, mice and ASF rats

ROACHES:

Periplaneta americana (American roach)
Eurycotis floridana “Big Key Torch” (Florida skunk roach)

02/10/2022

Two of the four species of roaches we have here. Periplaneta americana (American roach) and Eurycotis floridana ”Big Torch Key”(Florida skunk roach). This year I am thinking about trying and using Periplaneta americana to clean a deer skull and see how well they do since they are a very protein driven species.
You can see that one of the floridana females is carrying an ootheca (egg case) from her rear! So far, this group has been doing well and reproducing without issue whereas previous floridana groups I have gotten failed to thrive.

27/09/2022

***GRAPHIC DEAD ANIMAL***

I don’t like wasting things here so when a snake doesn’t eat a mouse offered, I feed it to the roaches. These Periplaneta americana (American roaches) will make short work of this mouse.

Periplaneta americana are one of the few roaches that seem to need a higher protein in their diet so supplementing with raw proteins such as a mouse or dog food keeps them from cannibalizing each other.

This is also raw footage. The only edit I made to the video was shortening it. Periplaneta species in general are FAST and twitchy.

09/09/2022

Go check out my morphmarket and see what’s available! I have a sale running right now on the remaining boas born this year! I will be adding other animals to morphmarket this weekend as well!

Roman’s Bugs and More on MorphMarket is owned by Roman Buck and located in Spooner, Wisconsin. I sell roaches and isopods that many people still don’t have as well as the common species. I strive for the best quality service and animals that people want. Not only do I work with invertebrates, I ...

14/08/2022

I’ve been super slacking getting the baby boas up on MorphMarket but they are finally up! Take a look and if you have questions, just let me know!

Roman’s Bugs and More on MorphMarket is owned by Roman Buck and located in Lester Prairie, Minnesota. I sell roaches and isopods that many people still don’t have as well as the common species. I strive for the best quality service and animals that people want. Not only do I work with invertebra...