Hello Cricket My Old Friend...

...I've come to culture you again. 🎶 😛 Seriously though, I found an adult female Orthopteran, more specifically a species that I've bred in the past, and have decided I want to breed again, Ceuthophilus agassizii, a type of camel cricket.

This species likes it's space and protein, and can be quite aggressive towards each other, still with minimal effort I established a colony and kept it going for a couple years, they really aren't that difficult, I just got bored of them and was in the middle of a big cull of the species in my collection at the time, so I let them go. But now I'm interested in them again so here we go. 😂

Here are some pictures of her:

Hopefully she is mated and starts laying eggs here soon, I'll definitely keep my eyes peeled for more individuals when I'm out collecting though.

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This Spring has been an interesting one, I've kinda gone back to my roots during the quarantine and am working with a lot of natives, something I wasn't planning on doing. However, I am having fun, and have worked with species and genera I've never got to in the past, which is a good learning experience! 😁 One group of insects I've kept briefly but never really given my all in terms of breeding is the group Zygentoma, also known collectively as silverfish. Whilst looking around this week I have actually found a few silverfish under wooden boards and old cardboard outside, and have decided to give breeding them a go.

I'm unsure of the species, but I suspect they are Lepisma saccharina based on size and body shape, the silverfish species I've kept in the past was much larger, I suspect a species of Ctenolepisma. Oddly, I've NEVER seen silverfish indoors here in Idaho, only ever outdoors, meanwhile most people only ever see them indoors, not outdoors... Weird. 🤔

I've got all five of them set up in a jar with half an inch of sterilized sand/clay at the bottom, (I'm running out of coconut fiber here OK?), and have a whole bunch of bark chips and chunks layered on top, so they've got lots of surface area. The jar is minimally ventilated and I'm gonna try keeping them on the humid side. I'll offer chick feed and possibly leaf litter for food, maybe some cardboard too, they aren't supposed to be very picky.

Here are some pictures of them:

Kinda cute right? 😄 I don't understand how some people find them revolting, they're quite pretty IMO, nice and silvery, with a sleek build. Hopefully they do well for me, would be nice to get a colony established, I think people value them quite a bit for their feeder use...

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