Here are some pictures of one of my females laying an ootheca:
Will keep you all posted on them!
My Arenivaga bolliana have started to mature now, mostly males so far, but I think I saw one small adult female in there too! Gotta rehouse them now, I didn't realize they were so close to maturity, and their enclosure is way too small for the amount of adults I'll have! Also, there is a sizable Porcellio scaber colony in their current enclosure, and while they haven't caused any problems yet, I am afraid they'll attack any new Arenivaga oothecae, so I'll have to eradicate them all.
Also, one of my Arenivaga floridensis "White" females is now a subadult, so I hope to finally start breeding this species soon! 😊
Here are some pictures of her:
She's a real beauty, hopefully she'll mature in a month or two! 😍
I have some good news and some bad news regarding my Pystalla horrida. Good news, I finally got them to feed on male Blaberus sp. "Venezuela", which they really seem to like! 🙂 Bad news, they still won't eat Hemiblabera tenebricosa adults or nymphs. I only have less than 10 Blaberus sp. "Venezuela" males left, and my colony is way too small for me to feed off any of my females. I have TONS of the Hemiblabera though, so I really need the assassin bugs to start eating those instead.
I think part of the reason they won't eat the Hemiblabera is that they often play dead and are relatively inactive compared to the Blaberus, I may try dumping way more Hemiblabera than they could eat in their enclosure, since they will likely move more if they are always bumping into each other. If I do, I'll be sure to toss some fruit in there so the roaches won't turn on the assassin bugs.
Anyway, dietary problems aside, my last Pystalla nymph has matured and came out perfect, here are some pictures of it:
Hopefully I can get them to eat the Hemiblabera soon, but I'm glad they are eating something at least! This has brought to my attention how minimally prolific my Blaberus sp. "Venezuela" have been though, so I should really look into revamping that colony...
Lastly, I just cleaned out my Paranauphoeta discoidalis container, since most of the substrate was frass, redesigned their enclosure and added dead leaves and moss to the enclosure, etc. I have a lot more adults than I thought I did, so I'm expecting to have a population boom soon! 😁
I've also learned that the adults of this species seem to need vertical hides like eggcartons or bark slabs propped upright in order to properly form their wings. Took me a while to realize this, and as a result more than half of my adults have messed up wings. Most of the deformities are not very noticeable, just very slightly ruffled wings, others look really messed up though. But hey, at least now I know, and most of my newer adults are coming out with perfect wings now that I added some more vertical surfaces for them.
Here are some pictures I took of a few adults the other day:
With any luck I will have a big baby boom soon, as some of my females look like they are going to burst!
Anyway, that's it for today's post, thank you everyone for reading, will see you all in the next one! 😉
i feed my horrid king anything that moves - dubia nymphs and small juveniles, wax worms, meal worms and anything else that looks good. i was going to try shadow roaches but never see them. good luck!
ReplyDeleteThen mine should be eating the Hemiblabera for sure, I wonder why they won't... Thanks for the info, hopefully I'll get them to eat the Hemiblabera soon!
DeleteThey might have a poor appetite from being kept at room temperature.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, i'm pretty sure assassins will eat any insect given time. My Platymeris are fond of beetles, I even feed flour beetles to the first instars. (They can take down baby dubias but flour beetles move around more.)
I raised their enclosure temps a week or two ago, so I do not think temperature is the issue.
DeleteI think they won't eat the Hemiblabera because they aren't active enough, need to figure out a way to make them run around more, or find some other active invertebrate in my collection that they'll eat.