Some Random Fall Updates!

Both my Ancaudellia hamifera AND my new Ancaudellia s. serratissima have given birth this month, which is awesome! 😁 Been waiting on more babies from the hamifera for a while now, but was surprised to find babies in the serratissima bin already! Considering the relatively large size of the serratissima babies compared to the adults, pretty sure they only have broods of 6-8 nymphs at most. Still, so glad they've bred for me already, looking forward to watching the colony grow, and spreading this species around in the US hobby! 😄

Speaking of serratissima, some of the larger nymphs in my starter culture have matured recently, so I was able to get some pictures of some fresh adults:

Cute species, quite similar to hamifera in morphology, but WAY smaller. 😂

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Bit of a random update, but my Cylisticus convexus "Eagle, ID" have been doing quite well. Truth be told, they were the only species up on my For Sale List that didn't have any pictures, because the only pictures I've taken of this species were during the infancy of this blog, and all piss poor quality... 😅 So, I decided to take some new pictures of my current stock, not the BEST photos I could have taken, but definitely WAY better than my older pics of this species. 😆

Here they are:

One of the neater backyard isopods IMO, I really like their unique morphology and subtle patterning. 😊

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Now, for some sad Perisphaerus sp. "Kota Kinabalu" news... I'm down to three nymphs, and an old WC adult female. 😢 I had four nymphs, one of which was a subadult male, that I had HOPED would mature soon, mate with the old WC female, and perhaps trigger her to incubate another brood and give birth to more babies (truth be told, I have NO idea if this female is one of the ones who gave birth for me previously, or if she's a virgin...).

Now, said subadult male actually DID mature a couple of weeks ago... And died as a teneral adult, despite looking perfectly healthy externally. 😭 Not sure what happened exactly, but I assume it was just sickly... After all, every one of my nymphs were born from stress broods, as a result their survival rate has been abysmal, and they've been plagued will all sorts of random health issues. 

So, now I've got a pre-subadult female, pre-pre-subadult female, a pre-subadult or pre-pre-subadult male and that old WC adult female... It's a long shot, but I could still potentially get a colony established... Buuuut, might just need to get another starter colony one day instead. 😕 

Anyways, here are a few "meh" quality pictures I took of the adult female the other day:

Kind of a sour turn for this species, I suppose I'll just to wait and see what happens to them.

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Lastly, on a happier note, my second, runty female Macropanesthia rhinoceros has finally matured! 😁 She's still teneral ATM, but in a few days I'll toss the adult male back into their setup and let him mate with the younger female, and then both of my gals will be fertilized! 😄 The first female is already pretty plump, and hopefully starting to incubate a brood! 🤞

Well, that does it for this post, thanks for reading, hope everyone enjoyed, stay safe, and I'll see you all next time! 😉

Sad Cylisticus news

Unfortunately my Cylisticus convexus "Pied" have all died off, the cage dried out and they all died. There's really no one to blame but me, as I forgot to check on their cage last week, but I've neglected them longer without the cage drying out, so I don't know why the cage dried out so fast.

It's been a year since I isolated them and I still was not getting any pied mancae, just normal ones, so the adults probably would have died of old age and still not give me a new generation of pieds if the cage hadn't dried out. Still, it sucks knowing they all died out because of me, and who knows, next month they could have given birth to a whole bunch of pied babies! :(

My original colony has not put out any more pied individuals, so this color morph may be forever lost, and as far as I know the one person I sold some to has also not gotten his pieds to produce pied mancae.

My New Jerusalem Crickets Have Arrived! (And More...)

Another successful order of Jerusalem crickets! The order included:
5 Jerusalem crickets
8 or so Porcellio laevis (and as luck would have it, some of them are pure white!)
1 Amara sp ground beetle (he probably added that one by accident)

All in all, I am very happy with this order! Once the crickets have gotten over the stress of shipping, I will take some pictures of them! I was gonna do an unboxing video, but unfortunately my camera's battery died on me while recording! :(

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On an unrelated note, I recently shipped out some Cylisticus convexus to Alan Grosse, and he took some Great pictures of them, which he has given me permission to post on my blog. Here they are!

I think I will call this morph "Pied" instead of "Dalmatian", because "Dalmatian" isopods are white with little black dots all over, these guys are more splotched than spotted, like pied ball pythons. Anyways, that's gonna be it for today, I hope you guys enjoyed! :)

Cylisticus convexus unusual coloration

Roughly 40% of my Cylisticus convexus colony are either white with brown speckles, or are purely white with a dark line going through them. I have not heard of these morphs in C.convexus, so I thought I would share this with you guys. (FYI the original stock was caught by me in Boise, Idaho.) Here are some pictures!

These are pretty cool isopods, and I may try to isolate the white morphs once I can find some time to do so. That's it for today! :)

Cylisticus convexus

I've had these isopods for almost two years now, I found them In some wet debris next to a canal. I feed them dead leaves, dog food, fruit and veggies. The substrate was at first coconut fiber, then a mix of coconut fiber and rotten wood chunks, but now that has gotten moldy so I will have to change it back to coconut fiber sometime this month. They are pretty cool because they look like any other sowbugs, but they can curl into balls like pillbug. However, they curl up into a tear shape, rather than a circle like roly polys. They are not as productive as other isopods in my experience. Here are some pictures!

The cage

Will keep posted. Hope you guys enjoy!