The OG "Cleveland Aquarium" Gromphadorhina portentosa!!!

Roachcrossing Winter '23 Package Series Pt. 1/5

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Well, got another box from Kyle at Roachcrossing, and lots of new species to show off! 😁 Today let's start with an old hobby classic, but not one I've had the pleasure of keeping until now; Gromphadorhina portentosa "1972 Cleveland Aquarium". 

Kyle was kind enough to send me a large adult pair of this, probably the oldest reliably pure G.portentosa stock maintained in the US (and the stock that the "LLE Mahogany" morph was isolated from). Adults, particularly adult males of the original Cleveland stock get quite large compared to hybrid "portentosa" lines (and oddly dwarf the Mahogany morph too). So, I wanted to compare a major male of this stock, to a major male "Masoala" portentosa, since my majors from that strain have been very large and impressive as well. Plus, the two strains seem to have different major male pronotum structure, which is rather interesting, so I wanted to get some good comparison shots in that regard as well.

I've got my pair set up in a well ventilated container with a thin layer of coconut fiber as the substrate, and bark and cardboard rolls for hides. I'm keeping one third of the setup humid, the rest bone dry, and have them at around 75-85F°. I'm feeding them dog food and fruits.

Here are some pictures of the "Cleveland" pair, and comparison shots between the males of this strain and "Masoala":

Male "Cleveland"

Female "Cleveland"

"Cleveland" Pair

"Masoala" male (Left) VS "Cleveland" male (Right)

"Masoala" male (Top) VS "Cleveland" male (Bottom)

"Masoala" male (Bottom) VS "Cleveland" male (Top)

Some key notes/differences between the two strains I noticed:

• I really love the "Cleveland" coloration, very clean and a bit darker of an orange coloration on the abdomen than I typically see with the "Masoala" line (at least regarding the males, some "Masoala" females are quite dark, though they are usually more dark red than dark orange).
• Additionally, pretty much every adult of the "Masoala" line I've seen has orange/yellowish spots on their thoracic pads, whereas it seems most, if not all "Cleveland" adults have completely black thoracic pads with no spots. The middle of the metanotum and mesonotum for both these lines of portentosa have a big orange patch in the middle though, with some darker spotting inside.
• The pronotums of the "Cleveland" males seem to be stouter and broader than the pronotums of "Masoala" males, though oddly this "Cleveland" male has noticeably larger and bulkier horns than any of my "Masoala" males, even though the "Masoala" male in these pictures is actually larger than the "Cleveland" male! 😂 

Those were just the most obvious differences I could see between the two stocks, I'm sure I'll notice more over time as I get offspring from the "Cleveland" stock and have more individuals available for comparison.

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Just a little PSA, I've noticed that with the new, larger image size on my blog posts, it's become a bit harder to see the captions I occasionally put under images. Now, I'm not going back through the past 700+ posts on this blog to fix this issue in past posts, so y'all will just have to squint or zoom in to read older image captions (they're not THAT tiny to begin with anyways). 😅 BUT, from here on out I'll put image captions in bold, which should fix this issue and make it easier for people to read. Just figured I'd mention this little change.

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

Masoala Gromphadorhina Male

You know, every time I get a major male popping up in one of my hisser cultures, that species becomes my new favorite roach for that week... and my Gromphadorhina portentosa "Masoala" are no exception. 😂 Just had a very large and super pretty male pop up in my colony recently, and I just can't get enough of him. 😍 Not only is his coloration amazing, but the pronotum morphology is awesome as well, got a little scoop/extension at the front like large male oblongonota (and the actual HOLOTYPE of G.portentosa).

Oddly large males from the "Cleveland Aquarium" portentosa stock seldom, if ever produce pronotum extensions like that, kinda weird TBH considering that's a pretty common trait of the genus Gromphadorhina, and I believe is where the name "portentosa" even comes from, it translates roughly to "pig's nose", which you can kinda see if you squint your eyes while looking at a major male portentosa with a significant anterior pronotum extension/scoop.

Anyways, morphology jargon aside, take a look at this beauty, (plus one of the gravid adult females):

Phone pics I thought were worth sharing

Now for photos with my actual camera. Large/Major male

Major adult male VS minor adult male

Pair

Such a pretty strain, really hoping these become one of the more popular portentosa strains in the US hobby, they're big, beautiful, and hardy! 😄

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

"Masoala" portentosa Babies, Ammopelmatus Update, & Random Pictures!

Well I forgot to mention this in an earlier post, but two weeks ago, one of my Gromphadorhina portentosa "Masoala" gave birth! 😁 Oddly though I think it was a brood from my one sickly female, as I found her dead the same day. I'm pretty sure she actually aborted most of her ooth a few weeks prior and was acting a bit off from there on out. Thankfully she apparently still had brood in her, gave birth to about 15 of them, and then died. But the rest of my females are all healthy, and most are SUPER plump, so I'm expecting a lot more big broods soon (without the random post-birth mortality... 😅). And the offspring that were born are all healthy, and most have molted once or twice already.

Here are some pictures of the nymphs, plus one of the other adult females (showing off more "normal" coloration for this strain, compared to the "cherry red" female I showed off in my last post about this species:

Small nymphs

Adult female

So glad these have bred for me already, and hopefully there's a LOT more nymphs where these came from! 🤞

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Next up, some unfortunate Ammopelmatus sp. "Boise, ID" news. It would seem that heating my females to get them to catch up to my males in growth was a very bad idea, apparently heat, even coupled with high ventilation, causes a lot of issues with them, and all but one of my females died before maturing, with the last female not looking so good either. I've moved her back to a cooler location alongside my adult males, but I'm skeptical that she will make it. Poor decision on my part, but if I had just left them at room temperature they wouldn't have caught up to my males anyways... So seems like I may have been doomed to fail with the ratio of nymphs I found.

This is all particularly unfortunate, considering that now that all my males have matured, I now know that adult males of this species look pretty dang cool! They have long gangly legs, and VERY long spines on their hind tibiae that I've not noticed on other Ammopelmatus spp. males I've kept.

Here are some pictures of one of the mature males:

Hopefully my last female pulls through and matures in time to mate with one of my males, but I'm not holding my breath. At least I got to see adult males in person.

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My Alphitobius diaperinus are doing great, and I just added them to my For Sale list, but realized that despite having kept them previously years ago, I've never gotten decent pictures of them... So, for the completionist in me, and for my FS list, finally got around to getting some pictures of a group of adults. 😂

Here are the pics:

About time haha, still no pictures of the larvae, but meh, good enough. 😅

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Lastly, my Trachelipus rathkii "Ada County, ID" are also doing great, but again I've never gotten pictures of just normal grey rathkii... and I just added these to my FS list. So once again, for the sake of getting pictures of all the stuff I keep, and for my FS list, I took some pictures of then. 😆

Here they are, in all their glory:

I like the variation this species displays, they're a simple but interesting isopod IMO. Very intolerant of drying out though, and I only find them in very moist areas in the wild.

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