Pesticide Woes

A few months ago, I made a mistake that unfortunately resulted in the loss of several colonies of mine, many of which persisted for a while afterwards but were apparently rendered sterile or minimally reproductive by this mistake... 😩

It was a one time occurance that screwed over several of my roaches and beetles... Basically, I had placed a large portion of my bug collection beside my bed, for about a month in the hotel I currently live in. I started to notice after a month though, that EVERYTHING on level with the mattress started showing evident pesticide poisoning, which almost solely affected the females in all these colonies, but some developing male nymphs were affected as well. Apparently, hormonal pesticides that target females are commonly used against bedbugs, which are obviously a concern for most hotels and something this one likely preemptively treats for...

Which on the one hand is nice, because hey, no bedbugs! But on the other hand, my dumb ass put half my collection up against a bed which had obviously been sprayed with some sort of normal pesticides. 🙃 This explains why only the species against the mattress were affected. I've since moved everything to the opposite side of the room, and no more cultures have been affected since then... But yeah, did a number on several of my species sadly.

The species that were definitely affected and subsequently lost were:

Anallacta methanoides

Balta notulata

Eurycotis sp. "Venezuela"

Drymaplaneta semivittata

Hemithyrsocera palliata

Neostylopyga propinqua "Bloody Bullets"

Pyrophorus noctilucus

Rhabdoblatta parvula

Rhabdoblatta rustica

Species that may have been at least partially affected, that I also lost/sent away.

Bantua robusta (I haven't had much luck with this species over the past couple years to begin with, however I noticed a significant decline in the health of my females after being placed next to the poisoned mattress)

Blattidae sp. "Philippines" (they stopped laying ooths for me, though they did not have female nymph die offs, so I'm not sure if they were actually poisoned or not)

Hemithyrsocera vittata (I seem to suck with this species in general, however they were doing fine and laying ooths, until I put them alongside the bed, at which time they started crashing pretty hard...)

Hormetica sp. "Colombia" (this one's a real stretch, mine haven't bred yet, but they all seem healthy, no random prolapses, aborted ooths or premature females deaths as I usually observed in species that were pesticide poisoned. But they were on level with the mattress, so can't rule it out either until mine breed).

Neostylopyga sp. "Papua New Guinea" (however, literally every one that was sent to me was an adult, and most of the females seemed pretty old to begin with, so that could have been the reason they failed to reproduce as well).

My Capucina patula, Schizopilia fissicollis, and Phortioeca sp. "Ecuador" all started to tank for me around this time as well, however the Phortioeca never did well for me to begin with, the Capucina died completely regardless of sex, and the Schizopilia have been doing fine since I sent them off to a friend, so I kinda doubt the pesticides had anything to do with their failure in my care, and the timing was merely coincidence. Same goes for my Blattidae sp. "Thailand", which I've now sent off, they weren't breeding for me but pretty much instantly started laying ooths for one of the friends I sent them to.

There may have been other species lost that were affected by the pesticides as well that I've forgotten, but these are all the ones I can think of. Thankfully not too many species were lost, but many of the ones that were were pretty hard hitting. 😢 A very unfortunate occurrence for sure, one I've at least learned from. Thankfully I have reacquired several of the species I've lost, like the Anallacta and Drymaplaneta, and have plans to get more of them back soon. But yeah, just wanted to get this out in the open, to explain the loss of several species this past year.

That does it for this post, thanks for reading, stay safe, and I'll see you all next time.

Gromphadorhina, Eurycotis, Eupolyphaga & Eleodes Updates!

It seems all my Gromphadorhina portentosa "Masoala" are now mature, and man are they pretty! 😁 I sadly was too lazy to get pictures of large nymphs, but they are very pale and a mixture of neat reds and oranges that you don't typically see on old US stock portentosa strains. A drastic change from the very dark coloration the younger nymphs have.

Most of the adults are pretty large despite being reared in a rather small enclosure, the males are easily the largest portentosa males I've seen in person (even the hybrids I kept in the past didn't get this large). Most of the adults have got a really rich orange coloration to their abdomens, with some black markings here and there. A couple are lighter orange, but the most impressive by far are a couple of my females that are a stunning cherry red color. Even their pronotums are red, and it's not teneral coloration at all. 😍 This might be a trait I try to isolate as it's own strain in the future, for now I'll keep them all together though and let the first generation produced by me have as much of it's natural color variation as possible.

Here are some pictures of a couple males and one of the cherry red females:

Adult male #1

Adult male #2

Adult female

SUCH a nice strain, it's amazing that we've got another pure strain of portentosa in the US hobby, with locality data nonetheless! 😁 Kyle at Roachcrossing is also working with another old stock of portentosa originally maintained by UCR that seems to be pure as well (and more variable in coloration than the old "Cleveland Aquarium" stock). So we're really gaining new pure hisser strains with speed this year! 😄 Hopefully they keep on coming, can never have enough hissers in culture IMO!

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Now, no pics for either of these updates (because I've been super busy lol), but I've gotten hatchlings from both my Eurycotis sp. "Venezuela" my & Eupolyphaga sinensis "White Eye" cultures! 😃 Both have been a breeze to culture so far, I was expecting the Eurycotis especially to be rather finicky, but they've not given me any trouble at all, with most of my adults still being alive and well, and making more ooths! 😂 The Eupolyphaga are also doing well, and I think some of the small nymphs I got in the original group are subadult males already! So I'll try and get pics of those when they mature for sure!

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Lastly, it appears I made an oopsie with a couple of the TX Eleodes spp. that I got last year... 😅 

So, I had my Eleodes hispilabris "South TX Race" and Eleodes obscura glabriuscula housed in separate containers originally. However, I had my hispilabris in a rather cramped container, and the numerous males were stressing the females out with constant mating attempts. So I threw some of those males in my E.obscura setup since the two can't hybridize. Now, for some reason, I wasn't getting any offspring from my E.obscura, and then all of a sudden I started getting larvae after I put the hispilabris in with them... 🤔 Well, turns out one of those "male" hispilabris was really just a rather skinny female I sexed incorrectly, and the larvae I looked at had plain orange heads (compared to the red heads of obscura larvae). So I chalked it all up to the obscura having been collected too late in the Summer to still lay eggs that year (and indeed several of the adults died mere months later), and eventually housed the rest of my hispilabris in that same setup, thinking it was completely dominated by them now anyways. This was also the same setup that had a stray Alaus lusciosus grub find it's way inside that absolutely gorged itself on Eleodes larvae, so that whole setup was a mess lol. 🤣

Afterwards, I moved my obscura from setup to setup, basically just waiting until winter came so I could give my remaining pair a diapause and then hopefully get them laying again next year. That's what I did, and I moved them to their own new setup a few months ago, and am expecting them to breed by early Summer. 

Unexpectedly though, I didn't get very many of my E.hispilabris larvae to survive to a mature size, and most of the ones I tried pupating died off in their pupal cells, which is unusual since hispilabris is normally a rather easy species to rear. Finally one of the larger larvae not only pupated, but survived and eclosed successfully last week... But much to my surprise, was NOT hispilabris:

Yup, that's a female Eleodes obscura glabriuscula. 😂 So APPARENTLY I DID get larvae from them earlier last year, probably at the same time I started getting hispilabris larvae, but somehow didn't notice since the few larvae I checked definitely were hispilabris (and indeed I've reared a couple true hispilabris up to adulthood from that same batch of larvae). This explains the low larval survival rate in the breeding bin though, since the larvae of different Eleodes spp. will eat each other readily (they don't like competing for resources with other species). And it also explains the poor survival rates of the larvae I've tried pupating, since obscura are notoriously difficult to pupate and are finicky about humidity levels. 

So, on the plus side, for the first time ever I both successfully bred and reared up an adult Eleodes obscura! 😁 However, if I actually knew I HAD obscura larvae, I'd have put more effort and care into rearing and pupating then and probably would have had much better results... I also probably fed several of them off to random things too thinking they were just hispilabris, so, pain... 🙃 But, now I've got a WC female, a CB female, and a WC male, so hopefully the male mates with both the females and I get lots of larvae from them in their new setup this Summer. Plus, I've got a couple large larvae I'm still trying to pupate which I think are actually obscura, so here's hoping I can rear up a couple more adults! 🤞

Also, as a last update, the WC hispilabris (and couple CB adults) have started producing larvae in their setup again, this time they're the ONLY beetle species in that bin, so I should get much more offspring and have much better survival rates from them (and maybe actually rear up more than a couple adults). 😄

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

Bringing Back Eurycotis sp. "Venezuela"!

Nicoluc Shipment Pt 5/6

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After a several year absence, I'm happy to report Eurycotis sp. "Venezuela" are back in the US hobby! 😁 This stock hails specifically from Isla de Margarita, and despite having been in culture for quite a while, has yet to get an ID beyond genus. Whatever they are, it's a slightly unforgiving species as far as I'm aware, and since they're small and not that colorful, a lack of interest pretty much killed them off here in the US years ago at one of the hobby low points... However, since interest in new roaches has picked up again here, these should hopefully stick around in the US hobby for years to come. 😁

This is the smallest hobby Eurycotis, and they seem to like it drier than a lot of the other Eurycotis species in culture. I've been told to keep only a small area of the enclosure humid, the rest dry. Other than that, offering plenty of hides, heat and good ventilation seems to be the way to go for this species. 

I've got my 15 or so individuals in a well ventilated enclosure with a thin layer of coconut fiber as the substrate. For hides I'm using paper towel rolls, bark, eggcrate and leaf litter, and I'm keeping one third of the enclosure humid, the rest dry. I've been keeping them at 75-80F°, and am offering dog food and fruits as the staple diet. They really seem to love banana, though they've also eaten a fair bit of the apples and dog food I've offered them too.

Here are some pictures of an adult female:

Interestingly, these produce quite an odd defensive odor when disturbed, smells very chemically strong. Not the normal almond-cherry smell people say E.floridana produce.

Hopefully these will breed well for me, and I can get them established in the US hobby once more. The females have already started laying ooths for me, so that's a good start! 😁

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BTW, while we're on the topic of Eurycotis, I do have some sad news regarding my Eurycotis opaca "Jaruco". Sadly, of the four nymphs I had, two have died, one male and one female. One large female nymph has matured months ago and has been thriving for me, but I have no mate for her... I have one small male nymph but he has stopped growing, looks pretty skinny and isn't eating much, so I suspect he's on his way out for whatever reason... Definitely a challenging species, and apparently after asking others for care advice, it would appear random nymph die offs aren't too uncommon with this species. 😐 So, I'll probably end up having to get more this spring. Oh well, can't be helped I guess, at least my one adult female is doing very well. I think this species actually likes it very humid and somewhat stuffy, and they don't seem to be huge fans of high heat either.

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