A Few Exciting Updates!

My Schizopilia fissicollis have given birth! They actually started doing so in early April, and the resulting offspring have been doing well for me. 😁 The litters seem to average in the 20~ count range, not too bad TBH!

Here are a couple pictures of one of the babies:

And if that wasn't good enough, I just found my first Capucina patula babies a few weeks back as well! 🥳 That species seems to have smaller broods in the range of 8-12 per litter, with offspring slightly proportionally larger than those of Schizopilia. Now I'm just waiting on my Phortioeca to give birth, and I'll have bred all of the Zetborinae in the US hobby! 😄

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On one of the trips I made to Seattle last year, I collected some Porcellio scaber from Schmitz Preserve Park on a whim, since I didn't have P.scaber in my collection at the time, and figured grabbing some wild type stock with locality data couldn't hurt.

They've obviously done just fine for me (would be embarrassing to fail with scaber), and I snapped some pictures of them the other day:

So yeah, if anyone wants locality data, wild type scaber, feel free to check out my For Sale page. 😛

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In an exciting development, those Pseudoglomeris semisulcata females I obtained actually were mature, and at least two of them were mated, because they have given birth to two big litters of nymphs! 🤩

I've been keeping them at around 70-75F° and they've been doing fine. At least one of the two other females look quite plump, so I'm very hopeful they will produce litters as well!

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Lastly, I finally had an Arenivaga sp. "Mescalaro Dunes" male mature out, and snapped some photos of him.

Very hirsute for Arenivaga. This species is probably undescribed IMO, and has shown a clear preference for sand based substrates. I've got several adult pairs now, so I'm hoping they'll breed well for me, and we can get these well established in culture!

That does it for today's updates, thanks for reading, hope everyone enjoyed, and I'll see you all next time! 😉 

Lotto Porcellio & Copper Darklings!

Junkai Package Series Pt 2/2

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Roaches aren't all Kai sent me, he also sent two other inverts, which I'll cover in this post! 😁 

Starting off, let's showcase the Porcellio scaber "Lotto Ticket" he sent me. This "morph" is actually a mix of different morphs all thrown together, with dalmatians, calicos, white outs, oranges and wild types all popping up, along with a plethora of other morphs as a result of the very mixed genetics. As you can imagine, large cultures are quite pretty to look at, and I'm hoping some interesting morphs will pop up that I can try to isolate myself. 😁

I've got them set up in a small container with a thin layer of moist coconut fiber as the substrate, leaf litter and bark hides on top, and am keeping them at room temps (around 73F°). For supplemental food I'll offer dog food.

Here are some pictures of a few of my individuals:

A "Calico" type individual

A "White Out" type individual

A mix of different individuals and morphs

Porcellio scaber are about as easy to breed as an isopod gets, so I'm sure I'll have a bunch of these in no time. 😄

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Last but not least, Kai sent me three Meracantha contracta larvae! Unfortunately one pupated and died during shipping... But the other two are looking pretty healthy, guess I'll just have to really hope I luck out and end up with a pair for breeding! 

I've kept and bred this species before, so feel free to check out my other posts on this species for pictures. I don't think pictures of my new two larvae are necessary, but I'll be sure to get pictures of the adults if/when they mature! 

Anyways, that's gonna do it for today, big thanks to Junkai for sending me this package! He and a few other bug peeps are running a Discord server called Bug Town, a lot of cool hobbyists on there, and I'm on there too, so if any of y'all wanna chat with other hobbyists in a fun environment, check it out! 😁 Thanks for reading, hope you all enjoyed, and I'll see you all in the next post! 😉

Coelus & Porcellio Updates, & a Look at My Collection

My Coelus ciliatus are doing great, and apparently can pupate in the same enclosure as each other rather successfully, as long as deep enough substrate is provided, with a moist area in the enclosure. Lots of new teneral adults have been popping up in my main enclosure, which is nice! Lots of adults and larvae in the enclosure right now, these guys are quite easy to care for!

Here are a couple pictures I took of a few of my adults, (and a larva):

When I first got this species, I did not expect they would do so well in captivity, I am glad I was wrong! 😊 They seem very easy to keep, like Coniontis, wish that Eusattus were as easy to breed...

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I have some good and bad news about my Porcellio silvestrii. Good news, my pregnant female gave birth to a dozen or so mancae! Bad news, all my other females and one of my males have died. 😭

I really don't know what went wrong, the dead females all seemed to be fully intact, so it does not seem territorial cannibalism or any malnutrition is to blame, they had a corner kept moist at all times, so I doubt that lack of humidity was the problem, (however, two of the females died in the moist corner...), and I'm pretty sure they had enough hiding places as well. The male had his uropods and part of his face chewed off, and he was the runt of the males, so I'm pretty sure that was territorial cannibalism, which happens sometimes with the Spanish species.

The temperatures have risen a little bit in the past couple weeks, so maybe that could have caused the deaths, I would have expected that they would all have died if the temps got too high though. Plus, there are some Oniscus asellus enclosures right above them, that species is really sensitive to high temperatures, and I haven't noticed any die off in their enclosures. Oddly enough, the other females never got gravid in my care, the only one that survived is that one that was gravid, so maybe they had some weird illness from the get go, still doesn't seem right though.

Overall, I'm pretty stumped, no idea why they all died off like that. I removed three of the males from the main enclosure, leaving just one male in with the last female, as I don't want them to stress her out too much. Just thought I'd let you know how things were going with them.

On the plus side, while looking through the P.silvestrii enclosure, I found a young Porcellio scaber with unusual coloration! Hopefully it retains the white patches by it's rear when it matures, and hopefully it'll produce similar looking offspring once I mate it with a normal individual, (since that's what it's gonna have to come down to, as I can' find any others that look like it).

Here are a couple pictures of it:

Hopefully I'll be able to isolate this morph, it's quite an attractive individual!

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My collection has grown quite a bit in the last few months, so I thought I would take some pictures of my "bug closet", just to show you guys what it looks like now!

Here it is, in all it's glory!:

Really pushing the limits as to how many containers my shelves can hold! 😄

Anyway, that's gonna do it for this post, I hope you all enjoyed, got some new invertebrates coming this week, so stay tuned for some new posts about them! See you all soon! 🙂