In leiu of better edited photos taken with an actual camera, here's yet another blog post with phone camera updates. 😆
There was also an adult male in the mix, I'm unsure which of the two species it belonged to, and unfortunately when it passed it's tankmates ate much of it's body, so I was unable to salvage it for an ID. Will just have to wait some of the other males to mature for proper IDs.
Anyways, here are pictures of the two adults from this group, the female not-investigata, and the male which could be of either species:
Will be interesting to see what the non-investigata ones end up being!
Mt next generation of Eucorydia dasytoides "zonata" have started maturing out over the past couple months, and I did spot some hatchlings in their setup the other week. So I will definitely get another generation at least, not sure if there will enough to sell from this gen though, as I feel as though the adult females have been living suspiciously short lives, and I would have expected more babies by now NGL... these seem to be falling into the E.yasumatsui category of taking forever to establish themselves for me. 🙃
Gosh they are stunning, especially fresh adult males... Here's hoping they end up producing more offspring than I'm anticipating this generation, so I can finally begin to offer them up. 😅
Speaking of Corydiids taking their sweet time to establish for me, I have yet to post about these on the blog, but I have acquired a pure line of REAL Therea petiveriana! Almost all of the "petiveriana" in the hobby are actually T.bernhardti, or hybrid stocks, as far as I know true T.petiveriana have never been in US culture before (and I doubt are in EU culture right now either).
Among other things, T.petiveriana differ from T.bernhardti in that their hind wings are relatively long and orange, with black tips. Whereas those of pure bernhardti are tiny and black. T.petiveriana are also significantly smaller than bernhardti, with more rounded tegmina spots on average. I've also noticed that petiveriana nymphs are orange in color, as opposed to the dark brown/black nymphs of bernhardti.
To avoid further confusion with T.bernhardti, which has the established common name of "Domino Cockroach", Kyle of Roachcrossing has suggested the common name for true T.petiveriana be "Petite Polka-Dot Cockroach", which seems a cute and accurate common name to me.
I had a male mature out a month or two ago, only for it to randomly die prematurely. A couple weeks later, a female matured, but sadly it does not seem like any of my other males are close to maturing, so she will likely die a virgin. 😩 I have 4 pre-pre-sub/pre-subadult males, and 5 pre-pre-sub/pre-subadult females left, which I'm hoping will not mature at staggered rates, so I can actually breed these. 😅
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| Adult male |
Keeping my fingers super crossed these will breed for me! 🤞 Would love to have these established in the US hobby, same goes for the long winged T.sp. "Pachmarhi" I'm still rearing... but I'll save those for a future blog post. 👀
My Porcellio succinctus "MPROI" have narrowly avoided complete culture collapse due to a Rickettsiella infection, and have just produced a clutch of offspring (which will hopefully have gained some immunity to said bacteria). Interestingly, it was not a normal female that produced this clutch, but rather an individual that physically looks to be male, long uropods and claspers and all!
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| Intersex adult with full marsupium |
Rare bacterial infection W, glad every individual in my colony is doing it's part to keep the bloodline going, even in unexpected ways. 🤣 Here's hoping I can get my numbers back up over this year!
My Prionotheca coronata have been doing OK, I have 5 larvae from them that are growing pretty well, my adults have stopped laying eggs though, which is bizarre. Not sure what the impetus for oviposition in this species is... 🤔 Im any case, I'm glad I've at least gotten some larvae, and that they are doing well, hopefully I can rear most of them to maturity! 😄
I initially was rearing them in minimally ventilated 2 oz deli cups, with a couple cms or so of sand, keeping just a small corner of the sand moist, the rest dry. I've been burying fish food pellets for them to feed on, and have them at around 80-85F°. I just moved them to 8 oz deli cups last week, as the larvae have reached nearly an inch in length. 😄
It's uncanny how similar they look to Cryptoglossini larvae, just a bit more flattened. Here's hoping they continue to do well, and that I can eek some more eggs out of my adults! 😅
Lastly, I noticed not one, but TWO males just emerged in my Pycnoscelus surinamensis "Dark" colony! 🤩 These are of course, sterile, as are all males produced from P.surinamensis, just unusual genetic flukes in a fully parthenogenetic species. I rarely ever see them pop up, and to have two pop up at once is pretty crazy IMO!
Just figured I'd document it, I think the last time I saw a male P.surinamensis was way back in 2017 (gosh, almost a decade ago... crazy!).
Anyways, that does it for this little peppering of updates and phone pics. Hope everyone enjoyed, thanks for reading, and I'll see you all next time! 😉
