Rhabdoblatta formosana & Pycnoscelus surinamensis Updates

So, my Rhabdoblatta culture hasn't been doing all that well lately. Even after cleaning out their entire enclosure and then rehousing them, all my females have been aborting their ooths, and quite a few adults have died already, leading to a Phorid fly outbreak. I've been cleaning out most of the dead bodies fairly often and have introduced some Trichorhina tomentosa to the enclosure in the hopes that they'll outcompete the Phorid flies, however they still keep coming.

Last night I packed up 50 of my adults, (a rather large chunk of my remaining population), and shipped them off to Kyle, who lost his culture, as part of a trade in the hopes that he'd be able to get some offspring out of them before they all died off. I also separated two young males and one subadult female nymph (the last large nymph in the main culture), in the hopes of starting a new culture, should my main one die out.

However, this morning, after doing maintenance on the enclosure, I found that a litter of nymphs had been born in my main colony!! 😁 Finally, after my culture almost completely died off, and a very long wait, I have gotten a new generation of Rhabdoblatta!!

Here are a few pictures of the newborn nymphs:

Very glad I once again have babies of this cool species, hopefully they'll do well for me!

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Recently my Pycnoscelus surinamensis culture started crashing due to overpopulation, so I had to move them to a larger enclosure. Now that I have moved them they are doing much better, lots of them have been maturing lately, in fact last week I found another male in my enclosure! He was in much better condition than the last male I photographed, so I decided to take some pictures of him.

Here he is pigging out on some cat food:

And here is what feeding time looks like in this enclosure:

Glad that these guys are doing well, and that I was able to get more pictures of a male, which are super rare!

Anyway, that's gonna be it for today, hope you guys enjoyed this post, and I'll see you all next post! :)

Some Roach Updates & a Neat Find!

Just found a rather large ootheca in my Arenivaga bolliana enclosure, and I thought I'd post some pictures of it, there's not that many pictures of Arenivaga ootheca online.

Hopefully I'll soon see babies in the enclosure, I'm so glad to finally be breeding this species after wanting them for years! :)

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One of my Balta notulata matured today, which is great, really hope some of the others will follow soon! 

Here are some pictures I took of it: (The eyes look red cause of the flash, they are actually black):

I love the ornate markings on the pronotum, can't wait until they start breeding!

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My Blaberus sp. "Venezuela" female matured a little while ago, and I realized I have not taken any pictures of her yet, which is crazy considering how nice looking she is! She's got red pronotum markings, which I love, the red pronotum color form of this species is my favorite, I wonder if it could be isolated or if it's just random?

Anway, here are some pictures of her:

Hopefully it'll only be a couple of months before she gives birth, this may be my favorite Blaberus species in the hobby!

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My Dorylaea orini have been doing OK, the females seem to be getting old as the ootheca they have been producing the last couple of weeks are small and very weird looking. I'm still waiting on the good looking oothecae to hatch, it probably won't be long now. 

Here are some pictures I took of them today:

And some pics of the oothecae

Can't wait to see some hatchlings, this species is very beautiful!

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The other day while I was doing maintenance in my Pycnoscelus surinamensis enclosure I came across something really rare and interesting, a mature male! This species, which reproduces exclusively by parthenogenesis, very rarely produces males, which are sterile and unable to mate with the females. Finding a male surinam roach is very rare, so I was very surprised to see this guy at the top of the substrate. 

Here are some pictures of him:

As you can see, male surinam roaches are much more slender than the females, and have longer wings that cover the whole abdomen. I'm really glad I was able to photograph this guy, It'll probably be a long time until I see another one. 

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A couple of days ago my mom found a rather large female katydid, (Microcentrum rhombifolium), on the sidewalk, which she caught for me. :) I ended up letting her go since I'm not interested in keeping insects that feed on living plants, but I did take some pictures of her before I released her. 

Here she is:

It was very cool seeing this amazing leaf mimic in person, and I'm glad I was able to photograph her. :)

Anyway, that's gonna be it for this post, I hope you guys enjoyed, and I'll see you all next post! 

Pycnoscelus surinamensis

For the first time since I got them, I am going to blog about my Surinam roaches! I am keeping them in a plastic container with coconut fiber and sphagnum moss as the substrate. No decor is needed, these guys spend all their time underground. They eat just about anything, cat/dog food, fruits and veggies, dead leaves, anything really. The reason that I have not posted about them is because I have not had any interest in digging some up to take photos. However, their cage has become heavily infested with mites, so in the process of removing the roaches from the substrate I thought why not take some pictures? Here they are!

Adult

Nymph

The cage

That's it for today, hope you guys enjoyed this post! :)