Well well well, after YEARS of relative inactivity and sparse feeding behavior, Rosie, my female Grammostola porteri has molted! (on the 18th to be exact) 😁 Been quite a while since she molted, always nice to see her in her new skin, as she is always exceptionally pretty and shiny after a recent molt!
Here are some pictures of her in her new clothes!
Here's to many more years of Rosie being my best pet rock LOL, it's crazy that I've had her for over a decade now! She was one of my first invert pets, and my first exotic pet invert. 😊 Glad she's still going strong!
Unfortunately, the smallest and youngest of my Lucihormetica grossei females randomly aborted her ootheca the other day, and I've no idea why... 😕 The other two females are doing fine, and my large female looks about ready to burst. The nymphs birthed by the medium sized female are all L2 now and seem to be thriving, so that's good at least. 😅
Hopefully my big female gives birth to a huge brood soon, and fingers crossed my smallest female produces another ooth soon. Wish I knew why she aborted, my husbandry hasn't changed at all lately, and like I said, the others are all doing fine. 🤷
Last but not least, I have some good news and bad news regarding my Tomocerus minor, "Giant silver springtails".
Good news? They're breeding well, and even ignoring the predatory mites that found their way into their enclosure, so they seem pretty dang hardy! 😁
Bad news? Because I wanted to ensure other springtails (mainly my cotton springtails) wouldn't get into their enclosure and outcompete them, I put their tall, 32 oz container with only lid and upper side ventilation in a corner of my current bug closet, away from almost all my other inverts. The unfortunate bit is, there was one more container in that corner, directly UNDER my Tomocerus, that were isolated from the rest of my collection because of their pest potential... My jar of Sinella curviseta, AKA "Satan Springtails" (a term coined by my buddy Brandon Maines 😂), which only has minimal lid ventilation.
Bad news? Because I wanted to ensure other springtails (mainly my cotton springtails) wouldn't get into their enclosure and outcompete them, I put their tall, 32 oz container with only lid and upper side ventilation in a corner of my current bug closet, away from almost all my other inverts. The unfortunate bit is, there was one more container in that corner, directly UNDER my Tomocerus, that were isolated from the rest of my collection because of their pest potential... My jar of Sinella curviseta, AKA "Satan Springtails" (a term coined by my buddy Brandon Maines 😂), which only has minimal lid ventilation.
Well, SOMEHOW those pesky Sinella found their way into my Tomocerus container, and are already breeding in there too... So now I must go through the painstaking process of moving as many of the Tomocerus out of there without bringing ANY Sinella along with them, and I have to set up a new, clean culture of them. 🙃 So that's fun...
Oh well, lesson learned, and at least it seems like these Tomocerus will be relatively easy to culture! 😃
Well, that's gonna do it for today, thanks for reading, I hope everyone enjoyed, stay safe, and I'll see you all in the next post! 😉
Nice! She looks great. Vivid purple-pink.
ReplyDeleteI have my own 'what's going on?' situation with roaches that are otherwise doing well. I can relate.
Yeah, she always looks so much more vibrant after a molt! :D
DeleteUnfortunately that just seems to be something that comes with keeping live animals, some will thrive, some won't. Hopefully that Lucihormetica female of mine was a fluke, and my others continue to breed with no issues. And hopefully whatever situation you have going on resolves itself as well!