Reducing the german cockroach population

Both are excellent precautions. Try:

1) Get a caulking gun. Go around your apartment, and fill in everywhere there is a concave edge. 2) Find where the pipes come in & go out under your sink (bathroom & kitchen). Fill in around these. Do the same for the radiator. If electric, fill in around the wires. (Use caulk rated for high temperature - usually silicone - read the label) Silicone is also the best for possibly wet areas. Don't forget the big power cable for the kitchen stove. Usually each apartment will also have access ports into cable raceways. The cracks around the edge are not big enough to pass adults, but nymphs can easily pass. 3) For ALL electrical outlets & switch plates, install 'draft-stop' kits. This is basically a ~3 mm sheet of gummy styrofoam pre-cut for the 2 outlets or switch lever. 4) If you have a slow dripping leak in your kitchen faucett, fix it. Cockroaches need water too. If a nymph comes in hiding in the corrugation of a pizza box, don't make it easy for it to find water. (BTW, this is a major entry method for roaches.) 5) Verify screen fit. They can come in from your balcony as well. Verify an airtight seal for your A/C if you have one. 6) They might come in via your main door from your hallway if the whole building is heavily infested. Install weatherstripping. 7) Install an insect screen inside your bathroom vent.

You might get an occaisional visitor dropping in from a light fixture if your upstairs neighbour is heavily infested. Your landlord might get huffy if you fill in spaces in the light fixture with caulk, so use fiberglass or duct tape over any open spaces.

Thanks a lot.

Andy

The only way to make a dent in them is to get everyone in that building to let the exterminator in on the same days and stay after them for a couple of months until all the eggs have hatched. You also need to treat the ground outside. German and Asian roaches are the worst and they have been living with people for thousands of years. They are very hard to get rid of and easy to get back. Give me the good old Florida palmetto bug (American cockroach) any day.

Palmetto bugs are big enough to make good action targets for an airsoft pistol...

Catch one and hand it to a northerner and they will scream like a little girl. They really freak if you throw it in the air and it flies away.

Coming across the panhandle one night I was dead tired and stopped at the first motel I could find. Opened the door, turned on the lights, and one of the bastards was perched on the bed instead of complementary chocolates. I figured if he tried to steal my covers in the night I'd pin him to the mattress with my Buck.

In the grand scheme of the critters here they are really pretty harmless. They don't bite, they don't seriously compete for your food and they really prefer to live outside, unlike those nasty little roaches who live in your stuff or all of the other things that want to eat you a drop of blood at a time or just kill you outright, drag you off and eat you a limb at a time.

The reality is the American roach here has not lived with the myriad of chemicals people have been throwing at roaches for the last 200 years and they are real easy to kill. I just spray damned anything around outside the house and I never see a live one inside. Occasionally one staggers in and drops dead. I have a lot more trouble with ants.