Monday, May 22, 2017

Coelus & Porcellio Updates, & a Look at My Collection

My Coelus ciliatus are doing great, and apparently can pupate in the same enclosure as each other rather successfully, as long as deep enough substrate is provided, with a moist area in the enclosure. Lots of new teneral adults have been popping up in my main enclosure, which is nice! Lots of adults and larvae in the enclosure right now, these guys are quite easy to care for!

Here are a couple pictures I took of a few of my adults, (and a larva):



When I first got this species, I did not expect they would do so well in captivity, I am glad I was wrong! 😊 They seem very easy to keep, like Coniontis, wish that Eusattus were as easy to breed...

I have some good and bad news about my Porcellio silvestrii. Good news, my pregnant female gave birth to a dozen or so mancae! Bad news, all my other females and one of my males have died. 😭

I really don't know what went wrong, the dead females all seemed to be fully intact, so it does not seem territorial cannibalism or any malnutrition is to blame, they had a corner kept moist at all times, so I doubt that lack of humidity was the problem, (however, two of the females died in the moist corner...), and I'm pretty sure they had enough hiding places as well. The male had his uropods and part of his face chewed off, and he was the runt of the males, so I'm pretty sure that was territorial cannibalism, which happens sometimes with the Spanish species.

The temperatures have risen a little bit in the past couple weeks, so maybe that could have caused the deaths, I would have expected that they would all have died if the temps got too high though. Plus, there are some Oniscus asellus enclosures right above them, that species is really sensitive to high temperatures, and I haven't noticed any die off in their enclosures. Oddly enough, the other females never got gravid in my care, the only one that survived is that one that was gravid, so maybe they had some weird illness from the get go, still doesn't seem right though.

Overall, I'm pretty stumped, no idea why they all died off like that. I removed three of the males from the main enclosure, leaving just one male in with the last female, as I don't want them to stress her out too much. Just thought I'd let you know how things were going with them.

On the plus side, while looking through the P.silvestrii enclosure, I found a young Porcellio scaber with unusual coloration! Hopefully it retains the white patches by it's rear when it matures, and hopefully it'll produce similar looking offspring once I mate it with a normal individual, (since that's what it's gonna have to come down to, as I can' find any others that look like it).

Here are a couple pictures of it:



Hopefully I'll be able to isolate this morph, it's quite an attractive individual!

My collection has grown quite a bit in the last few months, so I thought I would take some pictures of my "bug closet", just to show you guys what it looks like now!

Here it is, in all it's glory!:




Really pushing the limits as to how many containers my shelves can hold! 😄

Anyway, that's gonna do it for this post, I hope you all enjoyed, got some new invertebrates coming this week, so stay tuned for some new posts about them! See you all soon! 🙂

2 comments:

  1. Wow, looks like that species is a prolific and easy one for sure! lol Glad to see anther species out there that defies the typical darkling requirements of separation during pupation.

    Sorry to hear about the P.silvestrii, hope you are able to save your remaining individuals or at least locate the problem. While on the subject on Sapnish isopods, I though i'd mention that I'll likely be getting my first Spanish species this week. :)

    Wow, your collection indeed has grown a bit! I've really been needing to post on my new and improved one, but I'm having trouble with taking and uploading pics onto my computer (usual one isn't working right now unfortunately).

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    1. Indeed, they are pretty easy to care for and decently prolific! :) Turns out quite a few species can be kept together while pupating, so long as enough space and substrate is provided, (according to Kyle at least).

      Yeah, really bummed about the whole ordeal, however my last female is still alive and looks healthy, so hopefully she'll continue to do well and create more broods, knock on wood! Congrats, can't wait to see which species you get! :D

      Oh yeah, it's gotten quite large, and I'm adding more to it this week, even though I'm actually trying to SLIM down my collection... Sorry to hear that, hope you can get your computer fixed up soon!

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