A Bantua Update (Mostly)

Hello everyone, before we get into this post, I would like to start off by saying that I hope you are all doing well despite the craziness going on in the world right now, and that you're all staying home as much as possible, practicing social distancing, and effectively helping to prevent the spread of this COVID-19 pandemic.
These are strange, scary times, and my heart goes out to all of those who have been affected by this virus, physically, economically, and emotionally. My deepest condolences to those who have lost loved ones to this disease. This is the worst pandemic to happen in my lifetime, one of the most devastating events in the world's recent history, and as an at risk individual myself, the thought of getting infected is very, very terrifying. I hope that we can all get through this dark moment in history, my thoughts are with you all, stay strong.

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Thankfully, despite the fact that the world seems to be falling apart, my roaches are all still doing fine. I sold around 20 of my Bantua sp. "Namibia" nymphs this month, and still have around 30 nymphs left. Some of the nymphs from this recent wave of births are nearly half grown, and I'm looking forward to the next wave of babies here in the next month. ☺

Interestingly, I've noted that for the first couple of instars, nymphs seem to lack any sort of waxy coating on their exoskeletons, it's only around the molt to L3/L4 that they seem to start developing that substance.

Also, they are really chowing down on the artificial pollen now, much more than before, and are also making noticeable dents in the chick feed too. It seems nymphs are more protein hungry than adults, which prefer the fruits.

Anyways, I nabbed some pictures of the nymphs and some adults recently, including some nice shots of my biggest female with a couple of males! 😁

L3-L4 nymph

L2 nymph, (note no waxy coating)

Adult female

Adult female and two adult males

Adult males

Weirdly, I found two nymphs in my colony with weird deformities, I'm not sure if they're genetic or just due to molting problems... I've never seen roaches with these types of deformities, it almost looks like the hemolymph filled "bubbles" you'll sometimes see in Tenebrionid beetles, (which can be fatal). 

I've isolated these two to their own enclosure and will monitor their development, if these deformities were simply molt related and the roaches return to normal after a few molts, I'll reintroduce them to the colony. If not, I'll assume the deformities are due to genetic flukes and euthanize them, (I wish my tarantula would eat them, but she doesn't appear to be hungry, just weirdly aggressive).

Weird right? Just in case these deformities are due to molting difficulties, which I'm assuming would be due to space competition and/or bullying from other nymphs, I'll probably be adding more vertical bark to their enclosure soon, for them to hide in between and molt from.

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Also, one random update, that Opatroides punctulatus adult I had is no longer with us... That is to say, I threw some Apsena into it's enclosure, which I had collected for a friend, and when I went to dump all that substrate into the shipping deli cup a few days later, I could not find the Opatroides after a minute of searching the substrate... So I gave up. 😛 I'm sure he's living it up with the Apsena in their new home, it was a dead end of a breeding project for me anyways, seeing as I'm pretty positive I did get unlucky with it being a male. Thought I'd let you all know!

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

Tiny Teneb Update

So apparently my two Lepidocnemeplatia sericea and sole Opatroides punctulatus are all still alive, still no offspring, think I got unlucky and caught all males, oh well!

Anyways, decided to test out my sister's new camera, with one of the L.sericea as a test subject, I think the result was pretty nice, best picture I've gotten of this species for sure:

So yeah, might be seeing more pictures from that camera on this blog, I'm also thinking of using my phone for more pictures or at least videos in the future, I'm not sure...

Anyways, that's it for this short post, thanks for reading everyone, hope you all enjoyed, I'll see you next time! 😉

The Gyna, the Bantua, & the Unfortunate...

First, let's start with the good news... Whilst digging around in my Gyna capucina colony the past few weeks, I've noticed that since the move, most of the tiny nymphs in the enclosure have molted several times, with most of the nymphs being a quarter to half grown already. There have been no nymph deaths that I know of either as of late. This was the plan, and it seems to be going smoothly. 😁

However, while digging through my enclosure a couple days ago, I found what appeared to be a first, MAYBE second instar nymph. Now I'm preeety sure all my tiny nymphs that were that size have grown significantly by now, and I'd be very surprised if there were any that young still in the enclosure from the batch of individuals I received from my friend... SO I think it's relatively safe to assume this nymph came from one of my adult females, so I'm pretty sure I've successfully bred G.capucina! 😄

I have no idea how many babies my females have produced, since the colony I received is quite large and nymphs are surprisingly hard to find in the new enclosure, (despite the substrate being almost liquid with movement in some spots), but I'm pretty dang sure at least one of them has given birth now, hopefully to a sizable litter! 🙂

In other news, food is disappearing very rapidly now, with fruits (namely apple) being their favorites so far, artificial pollen second, chick feed third. The dead leaves have basically gone untouched, and they seem to be doing fine on a substrate predominantly made up of fine coconut fiber, so a chunky substrate does not seem necessary for these despite some reports.

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So unfortunately, a little over a week ago while doing maintenance on my Bantua sp. "Namibia" I saw a sad sight, one of my females had a prolapse... 😭 Prolapses in roaches never seem to be husbandry related, just random flukes for the most part, so I'm not too worried about my setup or anything, but it is a bummer and a heavy loss for a starter colony...
She'll either die soon, or just never reproduce again, time will tell... I did notice one particularly flat looking female in my enclosure a couple days ago, so she may have retracted her prolapse already, (or it dried up and fell off), either that or another female aborted an ooth, but I didn't see any aborted ooths in the enclosure at the time...

In happier news though, all six of the nymphs from that first litter are subadults or pre-subs now... 😄 They grow SO fast, I swear they'll all be mature by the time my other females pop! 😂 I can't help but wonder if that flat female I saw the other day was a freshly matured individual from this litter, however I don't think so, since she didn't have the thin waxy coating freshly mature females usually do.

I did end up rearranging their enclosure just a little bit, I removed one of the forked branches in the enclosure, (which makes maintenance a lot easier, and they don't seem to miss it too much), added a couple small cardboard rolls for them to hide in, and propped the horizontal bark slabs up against them, so they're all a little vertically slanted now. I'm hoping this will provide more useable cover for them, and I'll be keeping the area with the slightly slanted bark slabs a little more humid than the drier parts of the enclosure. The large nymphs especially seem to like this area now. 🙂

Also, while doing maintenance a couple days ago, I was adding some banana slices to the enclosure and noticed an adult male perched on one of the taller branches in the enclosure, just chilling. So I decided to smear a little banana on my finger and offer it to him, and he ate it right up! 😊

Here he is in the act:

It was quite a fun little experience, I love hand feeding roaches, and this species is chill enough even as adult males to be hand fed, which is awesome! Really hoping my remaining healthy females pop soon, they're due any day now! 😀

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Now let's get to the unfortunate news... So evidently that Opatroides punctulatus adult I caught was male, as I've not been able to find a single larva in the deli cup, either that or conditions aren't optimal for reproduction, however I kinda doubt that TBH... Whatever sex it may be, it's quite healthy still at the very least. 😅

Additionally, I'm not even sure if my Lepidocnemeplatia sericea are still alive, all I know is there definitely aren't larvae in the enclosure. 😐 So again, either I got two males, or conditions aren't optimal for reproduction, which is very possible, Pimellinae are the weirdos of the Teneb world and often very difficult to breed...

So basically these two Teneb projects seem to have hit a dead end, which is unfortunate, but to be honest I wasn't really getting my hopes up with either species on account of the low numbers I started out with, so I'm not all that disappointed.

Anyways, that's gonna do it for this post, I hope everyone enjoyed, happy holidays, I'll see you all next time! 😉

Opatroides punctulatus Update

Just a short update on my suspected Opatroides, in a private conversation with Tenebrionidae expert and taxonomist Andrew Johnston, I asked him if he could confirm or deny my tentative ID of this specimen. He did indeed confirm that this was Opatroides punctulatus, and that while he'd heard that they'd been found as far north as Oregon, he wasn't aware of any prior sightings in Idaho... They're definitely here though! 😂

As for the breeding side of things, I can't say for sure, but I THINK I saw a larva in the deli cup while doing maintenance today, but it was just a flash, and digging through the substrate for a couple minutes only turned up the (healthy) adult... Guess I'll just have to wait a bit longer to see if I do indeed have larvae.

Also, on an unrelated note, I've just started posting more regularly on my Instagram account, so if y'all wanna follow me there, simply click on the IG logo located at the top right corner of the blog! 😉

Well, that's gonna do it for this post, thanks for reading everyone, I'll see you all next time!

Interesting Introduced Invert in Idaho...

Well, at least I THINK it's an introduced species, the images I submitted to Bugguide have yet to be properly identified...

Anyways, a week ago while going on a walk, I turned over a wooden plank on the ground and found a small, black Tenebrionid. At first glance I thought it was a tiny Coniontis adult, but upon further inspection I realized it was some other genus I'd never seen before... So of course I collected it, and did some research. 😄

It looked very similar to Blapstinus in appearance, but was too big to be any of the species common here, and wasn't as hairy either. After searching thouroughly through Bugguide, I'm pretty sure the only candidate is Opatroides punctulatus, a species native to the Mediterranean and Asia that was introduced to the US somewhat recently. 😯 They've been found in California and Nevada, and if my beetle really is O.punctulatus, then they've apparently reached Idaho... Interestingly enough though, they don't appear to be grain pests, preferring habitats similar to those of Blapstinus spp., (to which they are closely related).

For now I've placed this individual in a small, well ventilated deli cup with coconut fiber as the substrate, over a CM thick. There are a couple eggcrate pieces for hides, and one small area is kept moist, the rest is bone dry. I'll be offering chick feed as the main diet. Hopefully it's a gravid female, as I haven't been able to find any more...

Here are some pics:

If I get a confirmation or correction to my ID, I'll be sure to let you all know, if this is Opatroides though, then this may mark the first recorded sighting of them in Idaho... They don't seem that common yet, and hopefully it stays that way, as I personally find our native Tenebrionid fauna much more interesting!

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