Roach Updates with Phone Pics!

My Polyphaga plancyi are doing pretty well, this latest generation had a bunch of adults crop up over the Summer, which have been hard at work laying ooths. There's still half a dozen female nymphs that have drastically slowed down in growth for some reason, but all the males have already matured, as well as half a dozen or so females.

I really, really hope that this generation, I can get more than a SINGLE ooth hatch... which is all I've gotten from the last two generations. 😫 I honestly still don't know exactly what these ooths want for successful incubation, seems like a diapause doesn't help, dry/wet cycles don't work (and the ooths rot pretty quickly if kept moist for extended periods of time). I'm hoping consistently pretty dry conditions, and a long period of time will be the actual key to incubating the ooths...

Adult female

Oothecae

Nymph

Definitely the prettiest of the Polyphaga IME, I dream of the day we have their care fully figured out, and I can make them available to hobbyists.

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My Elliptorhina davidi had been doing OK, and I've managed to get to a second generation of adults, however they were not really thriving in their old setup. I have attributed this to a lack of adequate ventilation, so I recently revamped their enclosure and switched them over to micromesh ventilation, and lots of it! I'll be keeping them drier as well, and that plus the extra heat they get from a heat cable underneath their enclosure (which boosts them into the 90F° range) should hopefully cause them to start thriving!

These are definitely my favorite among the Elliptorhina, and so I really hope I can get them exploding for me soon!

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I know I just posted about them, but I found a particularly large Armadillo officinalis in my colony that I wanted to get some macro phone pics with.

I think of all the conglobating genera, Armadillo might be my favorite, just because of how beefy they are, and their unique exoskeleton textures.

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My Princisia vanwaerebeki "Big/Black" colony has given me a wealth of different color forms, and this is one I see cropping up in some of the males lately (though I haven't seen any females with a similar pattern).

Very dark coloration, with bright spots on the thoracic pads and minimal (but present) abdominal margins. If there were females that popped up looking like this, I might be tempted to line breed for this coloration, but alas that's not the case. But figured I'd snap a couple pics of this male for my own records.

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So the Polyphaga obscura have been pumping out oothecae, which is great, hopefully those will start hatching in like 6 months or so. 😄 I noticed they looked significantly different from P.saussurei ooths, so I decided to get some comparison photos to show the differences.

P.obscura (Top) VS P.saussurei (Bottom)

P.obscura

P.saussurei

As you can see the obscura are more straight and rigid in shape, VS the more curved saussurei ooths. The teeth going along the hatching seam of obscura ooths are wider and more heavily curved than those of saussurei. And while I didn't accurately capture this in these photos, the oothecae of obscura are wider and more rotund, whereas saussurei ooths are pretty flat. Overall the oothecae are pretty different between these two species, even though adults at a glance are quite similar.

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Kyle sent me some Lamproblatta sp. "Uvita, Costa Rica", these are unique roaches in their own family (Lamproblattidae), though they look very similar to Blattids at a glance.

I have them set up in a moderately ventilated 1 gallon container with a thin layer of coconut fiber substrate topped in coconut coir chunks, a little sawdust, and cardboard roll hides. I'm keeping them humid, and at around 75-80F°. I'm feeding them dog food and fruits as the staple diet (and will be adding leaf litter to their enclosure soon as well).

Small nymph

I need to get around to getting some better pics of one of the larger nymphs... this is all I got for now. 😆 It seems like they are very slow growing, and I got a small group of nymphs that vary wildly in age, so I'm really keeping my fingers crossed that at least ONE pair matures at around the same time so I can get them breeding... 😅

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Last but not least, my Princisia vanwaerebeki "Black & White" are doing alright, and I even found a small litter of nymphs in their enclosure recently. There are plenty of super gravid looking females, but they just don't seem to want to explode in numbers for me, still not sure what they want from me...

Adult females

Hopefully they can start popping out broods less sporadically so I can start making them available and use them in some hybrid projects. At least they're still growing in numbers, just very slowly...

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

Pods, Crickets & Roach Updates!

Last year I started an Armadillidium vulagre colony from a single gravid female I found inside a Walmart in Meridian, Idaho. This particular line (perhaps due to inbreeding) has thrown out a lot of color variations, one consistent one has been "Dalmatian" looking individuals. I finally got around to isolating some a few months back, they have now bred and while it's still a little to early to say, it does seem like their offspring all inherited the trait. 

So should be a simple recessive gene, in which case, while I do hate gimicky morph names, I feel that I have to name these "Walmatian"... 🤣 Credit to Kyle from Roachcrossing calling them "Walbinos" as a joke, which inspired me. We'll see if they truly do prove out though.

Here are some pictures of them:

One of the larger males pictured here is a high expression individual, most of them have been low expression though, meaning they only have a few small flecks of pigment here and there. Mostly quite pale, which is normal among a lot of "Dalmatian" morph isopods.

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Speaking of Roachcrossing, Kyle recently sent me a new Gryllus species from "New Park, AL". They are neat in that larger nymphs have a reddish brown coloration, whereas most Gryllus have pretty dark black nymphs, except for firmus, I've noticed my colony of those is throwing out paler nymphs and adults (initially a customer pointed it out to me and thought they were a different species, but after isolating pale nymphs to their own setup and letting them breed, their offspring are a mix of normal black individuals and more pale ones, so it seems to be just one species with variable coloration).

Anyways, I've got the sp. "New Park" set up in a well ventilated 5 gallon gasket bin with an inch or so of coco fiber, topped with lots of eggcrates and bark hides (they're being cohabbed with pure Blaberus sp. "peruvianus"). I'm keeping a third of the enclosure moist, the rest dry, and am feeding them dog food and fruits.

Here are somw pictures of an adult female:

A really neat new addition to culture, their chirp is pretty and they are very easy to keep and breed. Mine have already produced oodles of nymphs!

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My Spherillo sp. "Dream" have been thriving, I recently replaced their old substrate and revamped their setup, and they've produced a bunch of mancae as of late as a result.

Managed to snag some pictures of a few of them:

Pictures really don't do these justice... though I will say these came out a lot better than the last pics I posted of this species. 😄

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Now for yet another hisser project... I am "Hisserdude" after all. 😆 I'm currently working on refining a more consistently and vibrantly striped line of Princisia vanwaerebeki "Big/Black - 2017 CCR Stock". My main B/B colony is quite variable, throwing out a mix of high striped, low striped, very dark and straight up melanistic adults (the latter I've already isolated a true breeding line of, "Obsidian"). However I really would like a line that consistently only throws out individuals with the orange/yellow abdominal margins. And not just the more squared off, thin margins, but ones where the orange margins turn into side-striping. As that coloration is my favorite in the "Big/Black" phenotype. 

So first, I had to isolate a culture that only produced individuals with abdominal margins and breeds true to that. I accomplished this in a generation, it was actually incredibly easy. Now I've isolated the individuals from that colony with the highest amount of side-striping, a 2.2 group of fresh adults, and have them in their own enclosure. With any luck, their high level of abdominal patterning will be heritable, and I can have a true breeding colony of very "Vibrant" B/B within another generation or two. 🤞 

Here are some pictures of the individuals I've picked for the highest amount of striping:

Females

Male

Pair

Pretty, right? Now here is a more normally patterned female for comparison, note how square/rectangular the abdominal margins are, barely cutting into the black at all:

Weirdly, males seem to much more commonly throw out a higher level of abdominal patterning than females, there were plenty of males that had the nice sidestriping in the colony I pulled these out of, but most females had just the normal, more squared off abdominal margins.

Anyways, here's hoping I'll have success with this line breeding project, fingers crossed! 🤞

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