First post here. Ive done a lot of searching online and can’t find an answer.
Could I cohab a 2.5 year old Pueblan Milk Snake with Blue Death Feigning Beetles as part of the clean up crew?
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Welcome to the community, @unclevername741. (Clever name, imho!) I don’t know the answer to your question, but I’ve added a couple of tags to the post which may allow it to be seen by some people who do. Hopefully someone with that knowledge will be along soon.
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Thank you for the assistance
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Sure! I’ll see if I can rustle up a few folks. I’m not sure who has specific info for what you’re asking, but these people know a lot about a lot including snakes and inverts. Hey there, @jawramik, @erie-herps, @ballornothing, @spottedbull, can y’all help with one? If not, might you know who might? Please forgive me if I’m off base, or if I didn’t think to tag someone and should have. Thanks!
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From a quick google search I see that those beetles consume a lot of protein. I would be concerned about them nibbling on the snake during shed cycles or other times of low activity. Even dairy cow isopods have been found to bite to snakes and they’re a much smaller insect.
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Yeah, i definitely read that about the dairy cow isopods. The main reason i don’t use them in any bioactive builds. BDFB arent active hunters, so i believe if i kept enough food sources for them available it might be okay (
). My main concern is if the Milk snake would try to eat them and if he did by chance, could he even digest their iron clad shell.
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I can’t see a circumstance where a milk snake would even remotely consider an insect food as an adult. Milk snakes can be really flighty so if the bugs disturb him he may smash some of them while panicking so keep that in mind.
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Just wondering why you would need the beetles as cleanup crew? Is it for aesthetics?
Anyway, I don’t really see an issue. But I’m no expert on milk snakes. would the beetles consume the waste products? I’m pretty sure they would consume the sheds but what other reason would they need to be then cleanup crew?
Not poo-poo’ing on the idea, just wondering out loud (sort of).
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I am wondering the same thing as @spottedbull David. Personally I don’t like the idea of any kind of bug in my with my snakes. But that’s just me though.
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Yeah, they would eat the waste and sheds. Thought it would be a cool cohab/ mutually benefitial enclosure.
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Thanks for the tag, but unfortunately I know relatively little about death-feigning beetles. Or bioactive enclosures and what critters work best as clean-up crews.
That said, I believe that BDFBs are more scavengers than predators, so I don’t think there’s too much of a risk of them chewing on the snake, provided they have sufficient material to scavenge.
I don’t know how effective they’d be as a clean-up crew compared to more “traditionally” used species of isopods. I feel like their larger size and more terrestrial nature could potentially make them more likely to get crushed by the snake, and I don’t know how likely they’d be to reproduce in that environment.
This is all just a really long-winded way of saying…I dunno? 
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Sorry Jennifer, my brain had you down as one with a bioactive enclosure. Thanks for sharing what you had, though. It was more than I knew!
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