Happy Birthday To Me!

Hi guys, I'm alive! Today is my birthday, and lots of exciting stuff has happened! Yesterday my family and I went to the Bruneau sand dunes state park, and that was a blast! It was a cloudy, cool day, perfect for that area. Unfortunately that meant there were few bugs out, but I still managed to bring home some cool inverts! We climbed one of the smaller sand dunes, but it was still quite a workout! The view was worth it though, it was a great experience!

Here are some pictures of the area:

Here is a tiny scarab that seemed to be somewhat common there

An unknown species of click beetle (3/14/16 Turns out this guy is a Limonius species) I found on the dunes, I caught two and brought them home

A click beetle which I assume is a Cardiophorus sp, I only found one, I hope it's a female!

An Eleodes caudiferus female that I collected, hopefully she will lay some eggs for me, I have never had success with getting this species to reproduce in captivity

And finally my most exciting find, Eusattus muricatus! I caught several of these, I really hope they'll reproduce for me!

So that was fun, looks like I'll be keeping darkling beetles again, at least a couple species.

---

For my birthday I am ordering from Kyle, here is a list of the roaches I will be purchasing from him:

6 Corydidarum pygmaea (at a discounted birthday price!)
A sexed pair of Paranauphoeta discoidalis
A sexed pair of Arenivaga tonkawa
A sexed pair of Blaberus sp. "Venezuela"
And one male Byrsotria fumigata for my three females to mate with!

Hopefully all goes well, I will let you all know how the order goes.

Well that is all for today guys, I hope you guys enjoyed, and I will see you all next time! :)

I am done with darklings.

I wanted to announce that I am no longer keeping darkling beetles. I have had a really bad mite problem with these, I was not able to get rid of the mites no matter what I tried. I have also just kinda lost interest in keeping them, and it was starting to not be fun anymore,  so I released them all. It was fun keeping them, and they helped to inspire me to keep a wider variety of invertebrates, and darkling beetles will always hold a special place in my heart, but keeping them just wasn't working out for me. Have a nice day everyone! :)

Darkling beetles I have found in Idaho

This is a bit of a different post than usual, but its something that I've wanted to do for a while, so what the heck. This is a list of all the darkling beetles I've found in Idaho. Unfortunately I don't have pics of most of these, and some I haven't collected, so no pics for this list.

Here we go:
Araeoschizus sp
3 Different Blapstinus sp
Coelocnemis sp
2 Different Coniontis sp
Edrotes ventricosus
Eleodes armatus
Eleodes caudiferus
Eleodes cordatus
Eleodes hispilabris
Eleodes obscurus
Eleodes sp (subgenus blapyis)
Eusattus muricatus
Hymenorus sp
Lepidocnemeplatia sp
Pseudocistela sp
Stenomorpha sp
Trogloderus sp

I hope this is useful to anybody who wants to know some of Idaho's darkling beetle fauna. However, since I don't have pics of each species, I don't have any scientific proof, so you'll have to take my word for it. However, I have done a lot of research on darklings, and have spent many, MANY days looking through bugguide, so I consider myself well learned on identifying darklings. ;) Hope you guys enjoyed!