Common Name : Green Banana Cockroach
Scientific Name : Panchlora nivea

Status : Captive Bred

These fascinating little cockroaches start off as brown nymphs and then turn bright green on their final moult. They can fly well and are easy to keep. They will feed on fruit, vegetables & cereals like other cockroaches, but especially like banana! Approximate adult size 2 cm.

Food : Cockroaches will eat a range of fruit, veg, cereals and kitchen scraps. I feed all my cockroaches on my dried 'cockroach mix' (muesli, cat biscuits, fish pellets and bran - mixed together), plus a little fruit and veg. I generally feed the cockroaches once or twice a week.

Note : A tub of cockroaches will always contain enough individuals to start a breeding colony. The number in a tub varies depending on size of species, stage of lifecycle and how many I have in stock. (minimum 15, when I am over-run with a certain species, a tub will contain as many as I can fit in!)

How I keep mine

I keep my Green Banana cockroaches in plastic boxes (24 litre or 32 litre, opaque, purchased from Wilko or Tesco). I make air holes in the lid with my little soldering iron, great for burning the right size holes through plastic. I use peat, coir or vermiculite on the base and add leaf litter (Oak, Beech or other hardwoods) and pieces of bark or egg trays to hide under. I am discovering more and more that many cockroaches will eat some leaf litter and seem to enjoy it but it isn't strictly necessary as I kept cockroaches successfully for many years without giving them any leaves. I feed them once or twice a week on my dried cockroach mix and pieces of fruit and vegetables. I find banana and cucumber are favourites.

I place my boxes on a shelf with a heat mat on it, I use a strip heat mat (15cm wide) and this covers part of the base of the box (several boxes can fit on one long mat). Like most bugs it is a good idea to give them a dry and a damp area to choose from. I find the area above the heat mat is dry and the area not covered by the heat mat is a little more moist. I use plastic boxes for my cockroaches as I have lots of species and don't have the space to keep them all in individual tanks but of course they do equally well when housed in a plastic or glass tank and are much more visible.

Some cockroaches climb better than others, I find the Green Banana cockroaches are quite difficult to contain, they run, climb and fly! For this reason I tend to put a piece of netting across the top of their box, I can then take the plastic lid off without the cockroaches escaping. They are worth the effort as they are both pretty and make excellent food for other bugs, spiders and reptiles. They are very easy to keep and breed but like quite high temperatures and more humidity than most cockroach species.