New Invertebrates From Bugsincyberspace & Cody Will!!!

A few months ago I won a little contest Peter Clausen from Bugsincyberspace.com held on FaceBook for a free $30 order from his site, and I finally cashed it in for a sexed pair of Eleodes tribulus, a cute, fuzzy species of darkling beetle, and a vinegarroon, a unique arachnid I've been wanting forever!

Let's start off with the Eleodes tribulus. It is a small species in the subgenus Blapylis, males often have a small mucro, and both sexes are covered in hair. I only ordered a sexed pair, but Peter sent an extra female for free as well. 😁 Hopefully these will be relatively easy to rear, I've had mixed success with members of this subgenus, for the most part they have been pretty easy to breed though, just not all that prolific.

I have them in a small plastic container with coconut fiber as the substrate, with some dead leaves mixed in as well for extra oviposition impetus and/or larval food. I have cardboard pieces for hides and will be feeding them mostly chick feed. I will keep one area of the enclosure moist at all times and the rest dry.

Here are some pictures of them!

Male

Female

With any luck I should have little larvae within a month or two, will let you guys know how they do!

The other amazing invertebrate I got from Peter was a WC juvenile vinegarroon, Mastigoproctus giganteus, also known as a "whipscorpion". These are really neat and unique arachnids, they don't have any venom and while they do have pincers, they very rarely use them. Instead, to defend themselves they spray a vinegar like solution from their rear, using their "whip" appendage, the flagellum, to help aim the spray at their would-be predators.

The defensive solution is more mild than actual vinegar, and is basically harmless to humans. Sure, it would probably hurt a lot if it got in your eyes, but it likely wouldn't cause any long-term damage. That, coupled with the fact that these are actually pretty docile animals, makes them a great, harmless candidate for any bug enthusiast's collection! 😊

I am keeping mine in a gallon sized plastic container filled with a few inches of coconut fiber and sand, which I will be keeping moist. I have a bark slab in there for a hide, even though it'll likely construct it's own hide in the form of a burrow later on. I have been feeding it Parcoblatta americana nymphs and adult females, which it seems to like a lot. Will try larger prey items soon.

Anyway, here are some pictures of it while it is feeding on a P.americana female:

And the enclosure

I'm really thrilled to have one of these in my collection, they are such cool looking creatures, really hope mine does well for me and lives a nice, long life in my care!

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I also made a trade with Cody Will this week, I traded off the remainder of my Ergaula capucina for 10 Coniontis sp darkling beetles he caught in Cottonwood, California. I've been wanting to try and breed this genus again for a while now, so I am very glad to have some in my collection once again! This species is much larger than the ones I found here in ID, which is very nice, hopefully they'll be just as easy to breed!

I have them in a medium sized plastic container with coconut fiber and lots of dead leaf litter as the substrate, I put a small amount of leaf litter in the original mix, but then the beetles arrived and they were actually shipped in leaf litter, so I threw that in too, (after sterilizing it of course). Members of this tribe seem to really like leaf litter in their diet, (like Coelus and Eusattus), and while I haven't found it necessary to keeping Coniontis in the past, it certainly can't hurt to add some to their enclosure. 😄 I will keep most of the enclosure dry, with one moist area, and will feed them mostly chick feed.

Here are some pictures of them:

Love how large the pronotums of Coniontis are in comparison to the rest of their bodies, gives them such an unusual look, that and their cylindrical shape!

Anyway, that's gonna do it for today folks, you everyone enjoyed this post, will see you all soon! 😉

Corydidarum, Eurycotis, Latiblattella, & Pystalla Updates!

Well, after several months of waiting, I finally found some newborn nymphs in my Corydidarum pygmaea enclosure again! 😄 Turns out, low ventilation may have been the reason my females weren't producing any more young, I moved them to a bigger, taller enclosure once I got the first batch of babies, and only put ventilation holes along the upper sides of the enclosure and in the lid, and they just weren't breeding any more. Then, a couple weeks ago, Kyle Kandilian informed me that the reason they weren't breeding may be because of a lack of good ventilation. So I added more ventilation holes lower down on the sides of the cage a couple days after he said that, and now, I've got babies again!

My older nymphs are doing great BTW, they are getting pretty big, in fact I'm pretty sure most of them are close to maturing! 😊 My females are actually growing pretty quickly compared to the males, so I'm hoping some may mature before all of the males do, or at least around the same time, otherwise the males will probably all die before mating with them. Oh well, I got more nymphs now anyway, so if the males from the first litter don't get to mate with them, the males from this second litter will.

Here are a few pictures of the new nymphs:

The newborn nymphs of this species are SO cute!! 😍 Glad I got the females to start reproducing again, let's hope even more litters will follow!

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My Eurycotis improcera nymphs are growing nicely, however they are a pain in the butt to contain while doing maintenance, they are very fast and good at climbing, and always try to escape when I open the lid. This has made it exceptionally difficult to photograph them. The other day I was able to get a few pictures of them, they aren't the best, but they at least show off some of the new coloration they are developing.

Here they are:

I really can't wait until these mature!

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Nothing particularly interesting has happened to my Latiblattella lucifrons lately, however, I realized that I never got any pictures of my male, so yesterday when I was doing maintenance on their cage and saw that the male was at the top, rather than hiding among the bark or dead leaves in the enclosure like he usually does, I knew I had to get some pictures of him. 🙂

Here he is:

Looks pretty similar to a L.rehni male, but with a broader pronotum and slightly different markings.

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I am very happy to announce that all of my Pystalla horrida nymphs have now molted to L2! 😁 They are eating pretty often, and are now accepting tiny Hemiblabera tenebricosa nymphs, (which is great because my culture just had a baby explosion!). I even got to see them hunt the other day, very fun to watch!

Here are some pictures of them:

Glad these seem to be doing well in my care, I have really been enjoying watching them grow, they are very attractive little creatures!

Anyway, that's gonna do it for today, I hope everyone enjoyed, will see you all soon! 😉

Deropeltis, Parcoblatta, Zenoa & Pyrophorus Updates!

My Deropeltis sp. "Jinka" have been growing nicely, and they look so cute! 😊 The nymphs of this species appear to have very large heads, which makes them look very adorable, especially since they are also covered in fuzz.

While taking some pictures of one of my larger nymphs, it actually began to try and eat me, the hand I was holding it with had been used to grab the chick feed I put in their food bowl, so it smelled like food to the nymph, and it began to chew my skin up. After a couple minutes it actually started breaking through my skin, which was a little painful, so I gave it a piece of chick feed to nibble on during the rest of the photo shoot.

Here are those pictures, (the first one shows it eating me):

Overall this species seems to be doing pretty well in my care, very happy about that, I know they can be picky when it comes to humidity levels, so I'm glad my setup is working for them!

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My Parcoblatta caudelli are finally starting to mature, and boy do they look good! 😁 The males look pretty similar to other Parcoblatta males I've seen, but the females are quite unique, having wings almost as long as the males! So far it looks like I have two adult females and one adult male, and several nymphs that look ready to mature at any moment!

Anyway, here are some pictures of the adults.

Adult male

Adult female

I really love how the females of this species look, hopefully they'll start laying some oothecae soon!

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I haven't really seen my Zenoa picea larva doing anything lately, not making new tunnels or disturbing the substrate at all, so I decided to dig around it's deli cup and see if it either died or pupated. Luckily, it was the latter!! I don't know if anyone has ever recorded the pupal stage of this species or not, I certainly couldn't find pictures online of pupae from this species, so I took some of my own. 🙂

Here it is:

Very cool looking pupa, can't wait to see it mature!

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Lastly, just wanted to let you all know that I bought two more Pyrophorus noctilucus larvae from Gil Wizen this week, they arrived in great shape, and will hopefully do well in my care! (And not pupate prematurely or anything!). Also, I had to buy some rotten wood for them from Roman Buck over on FaceBook, as my Traeger sawdust that I am trying to ferment is taking much too long to do so, and I needed rotten wood for my Pyrophorus larvae ASAP! Roman shipped the wood out quickly and it is at a very nice stage of decay, hopefully my larvae will like it!

Well, that's gonna do it for today, hope everyone enjoyed this post, will see you all later! 😉