Tuesday, July 20, 2021

Micro Teneb Updates

My Conibius cf. seriatus are really taking off, they had stopped breeding last year around Fall, which I took to mean they needed a diapause. So I kept them in the high 60s, and kept them dark through the winter. When Spring came I bumped up the temps and gave them a longer photoperiod (which seems to be a lot less important than the temps), and they started breeding rapidly. 

Some pics of some CB adults clumped under various hides:





Glad these little guys are doing so well for me, makes me want to try other members of this genus out! 😁 I actually am offering these up to the public now, they are quite easy to rear and have some potential as occasional micro-feeders, more than anything they are cute and pretty for a desert Teneb though, and cultures make neat little pets.

Now to my Blapstinus sp... Mine aren't breeding as prolifically as the Conibius, but they are still doing better for me than ever before, and there's over a dozen CB adults in the colony right now. They also needed a mild diapause, I put them through the same regimen as my Conibius, and they too started breeding in the Spring. 
Hopefully I'll be able to build up the colony a bit more over the Summer and maybe even have enough to spread some around in the hobby, we'll see!

Anyways, that's gonna do it for today, hope everyone enjoyed, thanks for reading, stay safe, and I'll see you all in the next post! 😉

2 comments:

  1. These are excellent. I love the two-tone coloration of black and - what would you call that, maroon? Also pushes the buttons of my current tastes, which seems to be skewing away from exotically-sized tarantulas etc. towards the smaller guys.

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    1. Yeah, I see bluish black and actual red in person. Fresh adults look pretty blue in person since they are actually covered in a fine waxy substance that a lot of darkling beetles produce to keep themselves from drying out. :)

      I used to only be into larger, flashier species myself, but ever since I started seriously attempting to culture my native Idaho fauna (so about a year before this blog was created), I've developed a big appreciation for even the smallest, "dullest" of species... There's a lot of interesting stuff to keep right under our noses that we often don't even know exists!

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