Thursday, June 15, 2017

New Invertebrates from Alan!!

I made another order from Alan Jeon last week, and the package arrived yesterday! I bought some Pystalla horrida nymphs, and Alan threw in a couple other roach species for free as well, which was very nice of him! 😁

Let's start with the Pystalla horrida! I've been wanting some of these for a while now, and I really need more predatory invertebrates to take care of excess roaches, so when Alan started offering this species up for sale, (at a very nice price may I add!), I knew I had to get some. I ended up buying four L1 nymphs, and Alan sent a couple extras as freebies, so now I have six of these amazing assassin bugs!

I have them housed in a 16 oz plastic container with a piece of egg carton as a hide, and no substrate whatsoever. Once they reach L3, I will be moving them to a larger setup, or split the group into two small containers. I am currently attempting to feed them Pycnoscelus and Parcoblatta nymphs, they don't seem to like Parcoblatta, (even slightly incapacitated ones), they ate two Pycnoscelus nymphs though! One of the Pystalla even molted yesterday, and some of the others look close to molting as well, (either that, or they are just really full from the Pycnoscelus nymphs...).

Here are some pictures of the nymphs:







And here is their current enclosure

I love how the nymphs look, the L2 nymph already has some cool spines on it's thorax, really nice! Hopefully this species will do well in my care, if all goes well, in 6 months or so I should have some adults! 😊

When ordering the Pystalla, I also asked Alan if he had any Gyna lurida "Yellow" for sale, as it's a very beautiful Gyna morph in the hobby, and I've had my eye on them for a while. He said he did not, and that he was waiting for his nymphs to grow up a bit before putting them up for grabs. However, Alan, being as generous as he is, ended up sending a small group anyway for free, two adult females and a bunch of tiny nymphs! 😄 One female unfortunately looks like she's on death's door, but the other female and all the nymphs are healthy as can be!

This morph is really stunning, adults are a beautiful shade of yellow, instead of the normal browns and whites expressed by both sexes of the normal morph. The nymphs look just the same as those of the normal morph though.

Here are some pictures of one of the females:




Glad to add this Gyna to my collection, really loving this genus a LOT! 😄

Lastly, Alan sent me an adult pair of Chorisoneura texensis as a surprise! For those of you who have been following my blog for a long time, you'll know that I have kept this species before, and was breeding them quite successfully, that is, before I added some Sinella curviseta to their enclosure as a cleanup crew, which outcompeted my small C.texensis nymphs for food, thus wiping them out. 😭

Now I get to try my hand at breeding this species again, hopefully this time I'll be just as successful, sans the whole springtail ordeal, as I definitely won't be making that mistake again!

Anyway, here are a couple of pictures of the male:



If all goes well, my female should start laying oothecae soon, which will hatch after a few months into really tiny nymphs!

Well, that's gonna do it for this post, I hope you guys enjoyed, will see you all next time! 😉

2 comments:

  1. Congrats on finally acquiring some P.horrida! Those guys are very high up on my wishlist, but I haven't been able to get any since I don't have any suitable feeders ATM(apparently the defensive odor of N.cinerea is very affective against assassins). Love how they look like little robots. lol

    Haha, when you said you really had to get G.lurida"Yellow", I didn't think you'd already have some like a week later! lol Is that Kyle's refined strain?

    Wishing you the best of luck with those little Texans. :)

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    1. Thanks man, really happy to have them! :) I've got tons of excess roaches from many misc feeder and prolific pet species, need as many things that will eat them as possible! You'll eventually have the same problem I'm sure! ;)

      I figured I'd ask if he had any available, since I was already making an order from him anyway! :p Very happy to have some, the adults are beautiful in person! Don't know if it's Kyle's strain or not, certainly look quite stunning though!

      Thanks, already got an ooth from my female! :D Despite having plenty of bark and dead leaves to adhere her ooth to, she laid it on the side of the container, far from any bark or leaves... -_- This species lays their ooths in the oddest places!

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