Well, I'm trying again with my Iphthiminus serratus. 😅 I kind of neglected these in 2021 after the failure that was my 2020 breeding attempt (I only reared one larva to adulthood). Surprisingly 3 of my wild adults and my one CB adult survived up until this Spring, I had just been keeping them in a 16 oz deli cup with a thin layer of substrate and a few small pieces of bark for hides for a year.
I began to feel bad late last year though, so I gave them a mild diapause in the Winter, and then when it started warming up this Spring I moved them to a well ventilated gallon shoebox with a couple inches of rotten pine wood substrate, and pine bark hides. About a month afterwards my largest WC adult died, but I do think they've bred (and that large one may have been a female that laid her last group of eggs before dying), since I'm seeing what looks like chewed sawdust popping up in areas of the substrate...
The plan this time is to NOT isolate any larvae despite their cannibalistic nature, since they don't seem to like being disturbed at all. Instead I'm just gonna leave them be and hope 4-5 will pick corners of the enclosure to dominate, and I'll get at least a few adults reared up. If I do get even a few to mature then I'll have a decent breeding group of CB adults and can continue to slowly grow the population up yearly with this method, and hopefully experiment with using larger enclosures in the future. Basically, not gonna be distributing these in the hobby anytime soon, but am hoping to keep a self sustaining culture going for my personal collection for the time being.
Anyways, here are some pics of one of the adults:
Shame these aren't easier, as not only are they very cool looking, but they're also quite long lived! 😄 Wish me luck breeding this species this year! 🤞
Anyways, that's gonna do it for this post, thanks for reading, hope everyone enjoyed, stay safe, stay buggy, and I'll see you all next time! 😉
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