Pseudoglomeris, Moth Flies, & Hairy Fungus Beetles!!

Well, it's almost time to bring my inverts in diapause back out into the heat, and so I've been keeping them closer to room temperature over the past week, to wean them back onto warmer temps. 

One such species is my culture of Pseudoglomeris magnifica "Kunming, Yunnan, China - Copper". Seemingly as a result of the slightly warmer temps, two of my subadult males have matured already, and I've got a sub female who's looking like she'll molt soon as well (most of the other females are further behind in development for some reason, as well as the other males). 

One neat thing about this strain is their bright coloration compared to the other "Copper /" Chinese localities sold by vendors (like the ones on MyHomeNature). These "Kunming" are a much brighter copper color, with hints of lime green iridescence on the exoskeleton. They're quite beautiful, though unfortunately my camera often dulls their coloration greatly, unless they're out of focus for whatever reason. 😅

So, here are some pictures of one of the males, most of the pictures that are actually in focus dull his coloration a lot, so I included some out of focus images I'd normally delete, just to show off more accurate coloration:

A beaut, isn't he? 😍 Looking forward to having a mature female soon as well, and then hopefully they can get to breeding!

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My Setomima nitida have been doing fantastic, and are surprisingly quite popular for such a niche invert. 😁 

Anyways, I realized I've never taken pictures of their larvae before, so while packing some up for a customer a couple weeks ago, I rectified that:

I find the larvae cute, for a maggot at least. They don't revolt me like the larvae of Phorid flies and House flies and the like.

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Lastly, in interesting news, some small, hairy fungus beetles, Typhaea stercorea, have started popping up in my collection. So far I've only been finding like, one or two at a time in random roach bins, they're very fast and slippery little beetles, so I haven't been able to catch many to try and start a decent colony of them. The other week I was able to collect TWO from my Paranauphoeta formosana bin, so hopefully it's a pair or at least one of them's a mated female. 😅 

I'll keep collecting them as I find them though, I'm a fan of this family of beetles, and I once bred a significantly larger (and prettier) species of hairy fungus beetle years ago, though sadly they died out after F1 was achieved (they may have needed a diapause TBH).

I've got my two T.stercorea adults housed in a minimally ventilated 2 oz deli cup with about a cm of moist coco fiber at the bottom. On top of this I placed two pieces of dog food, which I've allowed to completely mold over, and it seems the beetles are in fact eating the mold (this species is cosmopolitan and most often associated with moldy stored food products, so obviously food molds seem like the best food source for this species in culture). Here's hoping this works to produce larvae, it my adults are a breedable pair that is. 😅

Here are some pictures of the tiny little things (they're only about 3 mms long):

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

Pretty Princisia, Moth Fly Surprise, & More!

Here are some short little updates on a few of my invertebrates. 😊

First off, my Princisia vanwaerebeki "Big/Black" are doing well, and I'm getting a lot of really pretty adults this generation. 😁 One male in particular really caught my eye the other week while doing maintenance, and I just had to get some pictures of him:

Ain't he a big beauty? 😍

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Now for an update on the Moth flies I talked about in one of my recent posts. Apparently they are NOT Lepiseodina conspicua, but rather Setomima nitida. 🤔 Kyle originally noticed the Setomima popping up in his Lepiseodina culture at around the F7 generation of the colony, and initially thought they were merely aberrant Lepiseodina. He's not sure how they got mixed in with them, and even weirder, he's ONLY finding Lepiseodina adults in his culture now. 

However the culture I have is entirely just these Setomima nitida, and I've never seen an actual Lepiseodina conspicua in the colony... 😅 Perhaps when I initially got the culture from Kyle, it was truly a mix of Lepiseodina and Setomima, but after the immediate mass die off they had (due to me not giving them any ventilation in their original setup), all the Lepiseodina conspicua died off, and the only survivors were a few hardy Setomima nitida larvae... 🤔 It's the only rational explanation I can think of. Oh well, they're still pretty IMO, and now I have actual showy moth flies to look forward to acquiring in the future. 😄

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Next up, my Neatus tenebrioides have produced quite a few larvae, and are now up for grabs on my For Sale Page. 😉 The larvae are quite cute and chonky, and boy are these things prolific! A very cool species that I see having great feeder potential!

Here are some pics of one of the larvae:

Cute right? 😄 So chubby, kinda remind me of lighter colored Alphitobius larvae.

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I'm happy to report that I finally started getting larvae from my Eleodes obscura glabriuscula again, apparently this species/subspecies only lays in late Summer and is very in tune with when that is, even in captivity. 😅 Hopefully this time I'll rear more than one CB adult up, especially now that I KNOW I'm actually getting larvae from them. 😆 

Here are a couple pictures of my two females (one WC, one CB):

Hopefully I can get a nice colony of these going and establish them in captivity, fingers crossed! 🤞

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Next up, I'm seeing eggs being laid from my next generation of Vonones ornata adults! 😁 These were giving me a bit of trouble compared to V.sayi when it came to housing multiple adults together, but it seems the only issue was food availability, particularly live prey availability. V.ornata are much more predatory and seem to require prey items at all times to keep the adults happy and stop them from killing each other... 😅 Thankfully springtails work just fine for them, and I've been dunking in tons to keep them happy and fed.

Here are a couple pictures I got of some of my adults:

Very cool Arachnids, so underrated in the hobby IMO!

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Lastly a short update on my Perisphaerus punctatus "Macao". They're doing fantastic, got lots of new adults, have had several new broods born in the last few months, overall they've been such a pleasant species to work with. 😊

Anyways, finally got some decent pictures of a group of this species rather than the few individual pictures I had, so without further adieu:

I'll never not love Perisphaerus, this had got to be one of my favorite roach genera ever. 😁

Anyways, that does it for this post, thanks for reading, hope everyone enjoyed, take care, and I'll see you all next time! 😉

New Dermestids, Showy Moth Flies, & Other Updates!

So a few months ago, I found a few dermestid beetles in my room. They looked kinda pretty, and were not a dermestid I've ever seen before, so I dumped them into a minimally ventilated deli cup with some crumpled up paper towel at the bottom, and dog food and dead inverts on top (mainly dead darkling larvae and roaches). They produced a decent amount of larvae, which have been thriving for the past couple months, mainly feeding on the dead insects (but also nibbling into the dog food a bit). Most of the larvae have now matured, and the adults are doing pretty well, and now will likely start producing larvae of their own soon.

However, until writing this post, I still had no idea what species this is, they're not Anthrenus, nor are they Dermestes. But now that I actually got around to taking pictures of my CB adults, I've spent some time comparing them to pictures on bugguide.net, and I'm now pretty sure they are a Trogoderma species. Not sure which one, there's 15 in the US, most of them look pretty dang similar, but at least I know what genus they belong to now.

Here are a couple crappy pictures of the adults:

Hopefully they'll continue to do well for me, I quite like their appearance, and may experiment with using them as cleaners here in the future. 🤔 Anyways, figured I'd share this little project with y'all!

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Now for a bummer update, unfortunately my firefly project failed. The few Photinus pyralis eggs I got did hatch, however the larvae would not eat dog food, prekilled and cut up mealworms, or live nematodes, and they died after about a week. So, definitely seems like cut up earthworms/snails are a must for that species, which is unfortunate, but oh well, at least now I know for sure. I'll have to wait to try breeding fireflies again until I have a good source of snails/worms for them.

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In more positive news, my Helleria brevicornis have been breeding very well, I counted over 60 babies in their enclosure a couple weeks ago! 😁 Most of my founding individuals are still alive and well, and should breed again next year after I give them a diapause this Fall/Winter.

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Lastly, there's an invertebrate I got off of Roachcrossing months ago that I never talked about on my blog before, mostly because I thought I killed them all shortly after acquiring them: the Showy Moth Fly, Lepiseodina conspicua.

Many people are probably familiar with moth flies, particularly Clogmia and Psychoda spp., which are common household "pests" that resemble moths, and breed in sink and bath/shower drains, feeding on various gunk that gets stuck in said drains. However, this particular species, L.conspicua, is less commonly sighted, and doesn't seem to infest houses, preferring to inhabit flooded treeholes and such in the wild. The common name "Showy Moth Fly" is well deserved, adults are black with tufts of white hairs covering their pronotums and margins of their wings.

These flies are fairly easy to breed, in general you want to set them up in a container with a layer of crushed, decaying leaf litter at the bottom, flooded with water, but preferably not completely submerged, you want some of the leaf litter to go above the waterline, both for larvae/pupae to reach the surface to breath, and for adults to land on I suppose. The larvae feed on the leaf litter a bit, but also really enjoy dog food being dropped into the water, they feed on the dog food once it soaks up water and essentially melts, and adults probably feed on that gunk too. However, it's VERY important that you provide them with good ventilation (preferably those mesh lids a lot of deli cups come with, since larvae can make their way up smooth surfaces and could escape out of basically any actual ventilation holes). If you don't give them ventilation, when the dog food rots in the water, the rotting process eats up most of the oxygen in the container, so if there's no ventilation you'll literally gas/suffocate your moth flies to death.

Now, unfortunately, I initially put my group of these L.conspicua in a container with next to no ventilation, and fed them dog food... So, a few days after I got them, I looked at their enclosure one day and saw that most of the larvae were dead and lifeless, and their enclosure stunk to high heaven. 🤢 However, there were still a few larvae that were alive, so I dumped the contents into a 16 oz deli cup with one of those mesh lids, which fixed the problem immediately.

Now I'm not sure how many larvae survived that initial mistake, but I estimate about a dozen. Over the next few months, I had adults come and go in pairs or trios, and honestly doubted I got any actual breeding pairs to mature at the same time, because I didn't really see any young larvae being produced. Oddly there's always been a few large larvae visible, even when it seemed like most of them should have been mature already... Well, apparently one of those small groups of adults in the past few months DID have a breeding pair, and did produce offspring without me noticing, because I checked their container last week, and there's at LEAST 25 adults in there... 😳😂 So yeah, they're thriving now, and I'm sure there's gonna be a TON of new larvae in there soon!

Here are some pictures of an adult (getting these pics was NOT easy):

Their white hairs turned kinda grey on camera, as did their black wings, as a result of the flash, this species looks so much more pretty in person. I'm glad these have recovered so phenomenally, just goes to show how hardy these flies are! 😄 Definitely a neat little group of flies, underrated in the hobby as neat little novelty pets (or even possible feeders).

EDIT 9/10/22: Welp, as it turns out, these are actually Setomima nitida, not Lepiseodina conspicua... 😅 Read this post for more info.

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! 😉