Some Misc. Updates

First off, my Arenivaga sp. "Dell City" are doing great, the females have been laying quite a few oothecae, and one of my many subadult males has finally matured! The males of this species look a LOT like those of Arenivaga tenax to me, of course I'm sure the only way of getting a truly accurate ID would be to dissect the genitalia.

Anyway, here are some pictures of the male:

Very handsome looking specimen isn't he? I just love how slender and long his wings are compared to other Arenivaga I've kept!

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Secondly, I've already got Compsodes babies! 😍 They are incredibly tiny, smaller than most Sinella curviseta springtail adults! (Which thankfully I don't have in their enclosure). The oothecae of this species have a pretty fast development time, only a few weeks to a month it seems!

Anyway, here are a couple pictures of the cuties:

The pics are pretty blurry, but it's the best I could do, these things are sooooo small! Very glad this species is breeding in my care, such a neat little cockroach!

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Also, I found some tiny nymphs in my Polyphaga saussurei enclosure!! 😆 I got my original nymphs in early 2015, and I'm thrilled that they finally have produced nymphs of their own! It's been a long wait, but it sure has been worth it!

Here are a few pictures of a couple of the nymphs:

Some of the nymphs seem to be missing antennae and tips of legs, I'm not sure why, could be that the enclosure got too dry for a little bit, or that the adults are trampling the nymphs, so I will be keeping a close eye on them, definitely don't want to lose any of my new nymphs!

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Lastly, one of my Pyrophorus noctilucus larvae pupated prematurely, I'm not sure why. Could be because of the rise in temperature here, or the switch from dog food to chick feed as the main diet, however the other two larvae are doing just fine with the exact same conditions, and show no signs of pupating. I ordered two more larvae from Gil Wizen, so hopefully they will grow at the same rate as my other two larvae, so that they can all mature at the same time and hopefully mate.

Anyway, the larvae that pupated built it's cell up against the enclosure wall, so I can see it pretty well, and it looks nice and healthy! The pupae of this species actually glow in the dark, so it's really fun to watch it at night! Once it matures it will glow even more brightly I believe, so I'm very excited for that, will be posting pictures (and maybe videos), of the adult once it matures and emerges from it's cell! 😁 Can't really get any pictures of the pupa though at the moment, I don't want to disturb it or destroy it's pupal cell, otherwise I'd have to construct an artificial one out of floral foam or something.

In other Pyrophorus news, remember that one larva that has the mites on it? Well the situation has become a bit worse. The mites have started spreading to the legs, so I sterilized it's substrate, (which had quite a bit of grain mites in it apparently), and will be feeding it mostly live prey now, as the grain based foods I was giving it were really fueling the grain mite population it seems. I will keep you all posted on any further developments with this larva.

Well, that's gonna do it for this post, I hope everyone enjoyed it, will see you all soon! 😉

My New Anallacta methanoides!!! (For real this time!)

Well, a little while back, I got 12 more Anallacta oothecae from my friend Sebastien Marcaillou, and this time, all but one of them arrived in perfect shape! (Due to a new packing method for oothecae he came up with!). I've been patiently waiting for them to hatch, and a few days ago, one of them did! 😄

I am keeping them in a tall, medium sized plastic container with semi moist coconut fiber as the substrate, I have bark slabs and dead leaves in there as hides, and will be feeding them chick feed, fruits and veggies.

Here are some pictures of the oothecae and the nymphs!

Oothecae

Nymphs

Really happy my oothecae hatched, and am excited to watch my nymphs grow! 😊 Hopefully these will become established in the US hobby again, and not leave it so quickly!

Anyway, that's gonna be it for today, I hope you guys enjoyed this post, will see you all next time! 🙂

L.lucifrons ooths & Porcellio ornatus Updates

My Latiblattella lucifrons are doing great, and my females have already laid some oothecae in my care! 😄 Seems like they've each laid one so far, hopefully many more will follow!

Here are some pictures of one of the ooths:

Will keep you guys posted on this cool species, really hope the oothecae will hatch without any problems!

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Porcellio ornatus "South" seems to be quite a fast growing species of isopod, all of mine have grown at least twice as large as they were when I first got them! 😊 They must be close to reaching sexual maturity now, if they haven't already, so I expect to see some gravid females soon!

Here are a couple pictures of one of the larger individuals:

This species seems to be doing pretty well in my care, hopefully the females won't all start to die off like my P.silvestrii any time soon... Very paranoid about that now, didn't think these Spanish isopods would be so challenging to culture, at least not the easier to keep ones like P.silvestrii. Anyway, will be sure to keep everyone updated on this species, hopefully mancae aren't too far off in the future!

Well, that's gonna do it for today folks, hope you enjoyed this post, will see you all next time! 😉

New Invertebrates from Alan!!

I made another order from Alan Jeon last week, and the package arrived yesterday! I bought some Psytalla horrida nymphs, and Alan threw in a couple other roach species for free as well, which was very nice of him! 😁

Let's start with the Psytalla horrida! I've been wanting some of these for a while now, and I really need more predatory invertebrates to take care of excess roaches, so when Alan started offering this species up for sale, (at a very nice price may I add!), I knew I had to get some. I ended up buying four L1 nymphs, and Alan sent a couple extras as freebies, so now I have six of these amazing assassin bugs!

I have them housed in a 16 oz plastic container with a piece of egg carton as a hide, and no substrate whatsoever. Once they reach L3, I will be moving them to a larger setup, or split the group into two small containers. I am currently attempting to feed them Pycnoscelus and Parcoblatta nymphs, they don't seem to like Parcoblatta, (even slightly incapacitated ones), they ate two Pycnoscelus nymphs though! One of the Psytalla even molted yesterday, and some of the others look close to molting as well, (either that, or they are just really full from the Pycnoscelus nymphs...).

Here are some pictures of the nymphs:

And here is their current enclosure

I love how the nymphs look, the L2 nymph already has some cool spines on it's thorax, really nice! Hopefully this species will do well in my care, if all goes well, in 6 months or so I should have some adults! 😊

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When ordering the Pystalla, I also asked Alan if he had any Gyna lurida "Yellow" for sale, as it's a very beautiful Gyna morph in the hobby, and I've had my eye on them for a while. He said he did not, and that he was waiting for his nymphs to grow up a bit before putting them up for grabs. However, Alan, being as generous as he is, ended up sending a small group anyway for free, two adult females and a bunch of tiny nymphs! 😄 One female unfortunately looks like she's on death's door, but the other female and all the nymphs are healthy as can be!

This morph is really stunning, adults are a beautiful shade of yellow, instead of the normal browns and whites expressed by both sexes of the normal morph. The nymphs look just the same as those of the normal morph though.

Here are some pictures of one of the females:

Glad to add this Gyna to my collection, really loving this genus a LOT! 😄

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Lastly, Alan sent me an adult pair of Chorisoneura texensis as a surprise! For those of you who have been following my blog for a long time, you'll know that I have kept this species before, and was breeding them quite successfully, that is, before I added some Sinella curviseta to their enclosure as a cleanup crew, which outcompeted my small C.texensis nymphs for food, thus wiping them out. 😭

Now I get to try my hand at breeding this species again, hopefully this time I'll be just as successful, sans the whole springtail ordeal, as I definitely won't be making that mistake again!

Anyway, here are a couple of pictures of the male:

If all goes well, my female should start laying oothecae soon, which will hatch after a few months into really tiny nymphs!

Well, that's gonna do it for this post, I hope you guys enjoyed, will see you all next time! 😉

Roach Reproduction Update!

Lots of my roach species have been reproducing lately, thanks in part most likely to the warm weather, (and my mad Blatticulture skills! 😜), so let's take a look at some of the species that have bred for the first time in my collection!

My Balta notulata have been doing pretty well, unfortunately my female died a little while ago, (probably prematurely, seeing as my male is still alive...), however she left behind 8 oothecae, and some of them have hatched! I now have roughly two dozen nymphs, which are doing good and have molted several times already! 😁 I came really close to losing this species in my collection, so I'm very happy I was able to successfully breed them and get their numbers back up!

Unlike most of the other Ectobiids I keep, which attempt to bolt out of the enclosure as soon as I open the lid, these nymphs actually try their best to stay well hidden, so I was only able to get one half decent picture of a nymph, here it is:

Really happy that this species is doing well now, let's hope these nymphs make it to adulthood with no problems! 

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About a week ago, I found some tiny hatchlings in my Arenivaga cf. genitalis enclosure! Now I have successfully bred two species of Arenivaga, and this species has done much better as adults than my A.bolliana did, considering that my female is still alive, and my male, though now deceased, lived a couple months, which is quite a bit longer than my adult male bolliana, and is the normal lifespan of adult Arenivaga.

Here are some pictures of one of the cuties:

Hopefully the nymphs will do well for me, really happy to have bred another member of this somewhat finicky genus!

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My Panchlora sp. "Speckled" females have gotten much thinner and more "frazzled" looking this past week, and was very concerned that they were getting stressed out by the large population of Sinella curviseta, so I was planning to rehouse them. However, before doing so, I dug through a little bit of the substrate in one area, next to some bark, and low and behold, I found several TINY Panchlora nymphs! 😊

Here are pictures of a couple of the nymphs:

So thrilled I got some offspring from this new species, can't wait to see them grow, the older nymphs are supposed to be very handsome looking!

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Lastly, my Compsodes schwarzi have started laying oothecae! 😃 To be honest, I wasn't sure if any of my females had even matured, until I saw one carrying an oothecae around that is. A quick examination of the enclosure revealed several other oothecae that had been adhered to the undersides of various bark pieces!

Here are a few pictures of some oothecae:

And a picture of an adult female, (at least I think it's an adult):

If all goes well, the ooths should hatch soon, and I'll have lots of tiny Compsodes running around! 

Well, that's gonna do it for this post, I hope you guys enjoyed, will see you all later! 🙂