Wednesday, November 8, 2017

Armadillidium, Anallacta & Panchlora, Oh My!

Pretty sure I made the same pun on a different post title as well, but whatever! 😜

My Armadillidium maculatum "Dalmatian" colony is doing quite well, and I've been doing my best to selectively breed for the most white coloration possible, while still retaining a good amount of grey spots too! I'm pretty sure I've done that now, here are a couple pictures I took of one particularly good looking individual:



Nice, right? I'll take the silence as yes! 😆 Hopefully these will become more widespread in the hobby soon, it's a beautiful strain of an already very attractive species, that every isopod enthusiast should have!

My Anallacta methanoides are maturing like mad, and I have quite a few females now! I should be getting plenty of oothecae soon! 😁

Here are a couple pictures of a mating pair:



Can't wait until I get some oothecae from them!

At least one of my Panchlora sp. "Costa Rica Yellow" females has given birth, there are more than a dozen tiny nymphs crawling around the enclosure now! 😊 I am quite relieved, as I was beginning to doubt if they would ever give birth, after their substrate was infected with a nasty fungus a month or two ago. Things are definitely looking up though, which is great! No pictures of the little nymphs unfortunately, they are just too small right now.

I finally moved all of my Panchlora sp. "White" to a medium sized enclosure, with plenty of bark, dead leaves, and New Zealand sphagnum moss for hides. There are three areas where I place food in the cage, so the adults are always sure to find some, let's hope they like it! Unfortunately the enclosure did get inoculated with Sinella curviseta accidentally, so now I have to keep my eye on them and make sure their numbers don't get out of control...

Also, while moving my old female and her nymphs to this new enclosure, I discovered that she actually gave birth to a good sized litter, a dozen or more nymphs! I thought she only produced half that much, so this was quite a pleasant surprise! 😄

Here are some pictures of the enclosure:




The adults seem to spend most of their time on the sides of the enclosure, which is a bit concerning to me, but apparently not unusual for Panchlora. They don't seem stressed, trying to escape or anything, they just like resting on the sides of the enclosure. I might redo the enclosure later and prop some bark slabs up vertically, maybe they just don't like resting on a horizontal surface?

Anyway, that is gonna be it for this post, I hope everyone enjoyed, will see you all soon! 😉

2 comments:

  1. Aaaaaand, of course, the day after I write this post, one of my females is hiding underneath a bark slab, and the other is underground... Figures! 😆

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