Anyway, I took a couple pictures of her the other day, here they are:
Here's hoping I'll have as much success with breeding these as I have with my A.bolliana! :)
Lately my Cariblatta minima haven't been doing so well, lots of adults have been dying, and some of the live adults and nymphs were biting their antennae and acting sickly. I rehoused them to a new enclosure with fresh substrate and new hides, and they seem to be doing much better! Their original enclosure was getting a little dirty, there were a couple generations' worth of frass and dead bodies on top of the original substrate, and they may have been just a little overcrowded, so that must have been why they were doing poorly.
At first I thought it was some sort of fungal infection, so I asked Alan Jeon what I should do. He said that if it was a fungal infection, I should find and remove all viable oothecae I could, put them in a clean container, then take out any nymphs that hatch and quickly move them to their own clean enclosure, to make sure that they wouldn't be infected with the fungus. He also suggested that I take a few females and put them each in their own little deli cups, so that I could easily find and remove any oothecae they lay.
Luckily that all seems to be unnecessary, since re-housing my culture seemed to fix the problem, but just in case, I did separate all the ooths I could find, and also separated 5 females, just in case my culture is infected with a fungus after all...
Here are a couple pictures I took of an adult female, (one of the ones I separated to their own enclosures):
It's a very nice little species, and I'm glad I was, (seemingly) able to solve the problem they were having before it was too late, as I think I'm one of the two people culturing this species at the moment, would be a shame to lose my colony.
Unfortunately, I am down to 16 Drymaplaneta nymphs, I accidentally smashed a couple while lifting their hide, and several more dropped dead for seemingly no reason. It may have gotten a bit stagnant in their enclosure, which could have been what killed them, since they abhor such conditions, however it wasn't that stagnant, so I'm not sure. Nonetheless, I have added more ventilation and am keeping them less humid, so far there haven't been any deaths since then...
I also added some bark to the enclosure to cover up the sandy substrate a bit, Kyle suggested I do so, since sand can be abrasive to the exoskeleton of roaches. Plus, it will provide better hides for the springtails I have added to their enclosure, in my experience springtails do best in cages with bark in them.
A few of the nymphs have made it to L3 already, which is great! I'm hoping that as they grow they will get hardier, otherwise it's unlikely that any of them will make it to adulthood...
I took some pictures of a few nymphs the other day, including an L3, here they are:
I really hope that I'll be able to breed these, they are probably the most difficult and fragile species in my collection at the moment, really want to get them established in culture here!
Anyway, that's gonna do it for today, I hope that everyone enjoyed this post, and I'll see you all next time! :)
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