More Phone Picture Updates!

It's about that time again, time to purge my phone of pictures, and post some of the better or more interesting ones. 😅

I was able to finally acquire some Deropeltis sp. "Tsavo West, Kenya - Big" for myself last year, last time I acquired this species they went straight to a friend who had more luck with Deropeltis, as at the time, I sucked at breeding them. 😅 Unfortunately and somewhat ironically, he failed to breed them, and I was unable to source the species again for years... 

This time round, I am trying to culture this species myself, with success in breeding two other Deropeltis species now under my belt. I started with one healthy sp. "Tsavo West" ooth late last year, and was able to hatch successfully and rear the resulting nymphs to adulthood with little issue. Now the adults are laying ooths of their own, which I suspect will start hatching out over the coming months.

I am keeping them in a well ventilated setup with a thin layer of coco coir substrate, topped in cardboard rolls and eggcrate hides. I'm keeping them fairly humid, at around 75-85F°, and am feeding them dog food and apple slices.

Medium-Small nymph

Large nymph

Adult pair

Female laying an ooth

These are a huge species as far as Deropeltis go, and they put all the other currently cultured Deropeltis to shame. Very broad in morphology, and their ooths are often over an inch long! Definitely an impressive species, and one I hope to offer up in the near future!

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My Deropeltis paulinoi are thriving, and are due for an enclosure refresh here soon. Such cute and colorful representatives of this genus, if not quite as velvety as some of the others.

Crazy how well these are thriving for me, and my other Deropeltis spp. are doing good too, really seems like high humidity and good ventilation are key to working with this genus!

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My Gromphadorhina portentosa "Masoala" have been throwing these dark red/purple looking adults, a morph which I was able to isolate a true breeding colony of! I am calling this line "Plum", and think that describes their coloration very nicely. 😄 

Unfortunately since moving them to a larger, permanent enclosure, they've not bred again, which is kinda weird... I suspect I overdid the ventilation and that they're now too dry, so I'm upping the humidity in their bin and hoping for the best ATM.

As you can see, quite an attractive morph, and from pure G.portentosa stock too! Hopefully they start breeding again soon so I can offer them up once more!

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My latest pair of Archimandrita cf. tesselata "Cerro Chucanti, Darién Province, Panama - US Line" is doing well, and both have made it to maturity successfully! 😄 These are SO slow growing compared to the old hobby stock Archimandrita (probably A.marmorata), and average way bigger as well.

This pair is in a moderately ventilated bin with a few inches of a coco fiber and coco coir chunk substrate mix, topped with leaf litter and vertically slanted bark hides. I'm keeping them humid, at around 75-80F°, and am feeding them dog food and fruits.

Freshly molted adult male

Fully darkened adult male

Subadult female nymph

Adult female

A beautiful and huge species, and still quite rare in US culture, hopefully my female will give birth sometime this year! 🙏 

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Last year I was able to finally acquire Liocheles australasiae, a parthenogenetic species of dwarf bark scorpion. They can be kept communally, though only one of the two I was rearing made it to adulthood (still unclear if it was eaten by the other, or died due to some other variable). 

I'd say the ones I received were about half grown, and they took about 7-8 months to mature, at least the lone survivor did. She then took another 3-4 months to produce a brood of around 16-17 immatures. Not too shabby of a development time, and that was a big first brood as well! 😄

I'm keeping them in a minimally ventilated gallon container, with an inch or so of coco fiber substrate, topped with coco coir chunks and lots of bark pieces. I am keeping them moist, at around 80-85F°. There are Trichorhina tomentosa, Compsodes schwarzi, and Nocticola vagus breeding in there, though I do have to top off the roaches sometimes as they are eaten faster than they breed. There are also Pyrgodesmidae sp. "Kota Kinabalu" breeding in there, which is funny as they were not a purposeful introduction.

Adult female

These are super cute little scorps, and I'm hoping to make them available later this year if my colony establishes well and they aren't cannibalizing like crazy or anything. 

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Last but not least, my Polyphaga saussurei are doing well for me, cohabbed with Porcellio incanus. Got some nice pictures of an adult female and figured I would post them here. 😊

Fun fact, these were the second species I ever posted about on this blog! Crazy how far I've come since then, and how far the hobby itself has advanced in the last decade. 😄

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

cf. Rochaina metae Successful Hatching!

I have yet another successful Rochaina hatching under my belt, this time a wild collected ooth from Refugio Amazonas, Tambopata, Peru. 😁 Presumably Rochaina metae, as the person who found and collected this ootheca also found an adult female R.metae from the same locality, who went on to lay oothecae in captivity (one of which I was recently sent and am still incubating).

However, there is still technically a small chance this wild collected ooth, found on a twig of low growing foliage, could have been laid by something else entirely. Either a different Rochaina species like R.peruana, or even something closely related like Eushelfordia pica (also recorded from the same area in Peru) or another similar Nyctiboridae. I'll have a better idea once that captive laid ooth from the for sure R.metae female hatches, if the offspring look identical to these then it's safe to say they're both R.metae.

I kept this ooth in a 16 oz deli cup with a mesh lid, with a thin layer of coco fiber at the bottom, topped in some cork bark pieces. I placed the ooth on top of the bark and kept the substrate moist, but seldom misted the ooth and made sure the bark it was placed on stayed fairly dry. Very high air humidity but low surface moisture seems to be the key to incubating these types of arboreal Nyctiborids. This cup was housed within a larger 5 gallon enclosure for a different roach species, so the humidity stayed extra high. I kept them at around 80-85F°. The ooth took about 2.5 months to hatch after collection. Hard to say when exactly this one was laid obviously, but safe to assume 3-4 months is the average incubation period for Rochaina and possibly similar small, arboreal Nyctiboridae.

When the ooth hatched, it stayed very rigid, and the seam only opened up a tiny bit. The nymphs seemed to have some difficulties escaping the ooth, and after days of nymphs slowly trickling out, in the end I broke a small piece off from the rim to allow them to exit easier. The oothecae of these Nyctiborids are super tough, kinda feels like metal, and it was hard to break a piece off without just smashing the ooth.

Interestingly, as I would tease open the ooth over several days, while it was hard to get a good view of the contents, I would see some freshly teneral nymphs each day, which indicates that they hatched at staggered rates inside their ooth. It's very odd that these hatch inside the oothecae and then exit later, rather than the hatching being their exit from the ooth like in most roaches, quite unusual!

The resulting 25-30 nymphs are doing well in a half gallon screw top jar with a fully vented lid. There is a thin layer of coco fiber substrate, topped with artificial fern fronds as their hides. I'm keeping the substrate moist, but only lightly misting the fake foliage once or twice a week, again high air humidity and low surface moisture is definitely the way to go for these I've noticed, after figuring that out with R.bilunata. I'm feeding them artificial pollen, fish/dog food, and fresh fruits. Several of them have already molted to L2, interestingly in this species the patterning on L1 and L2 are identical, compared to the extreme patterning differences between L1 and L2 R.bilunata.

Ootheca (shortly after arrival)

Ootheca hatching (note the seam is slightly open)

L1 nymphs

L2 nymph

Such adorable and rotund little nymphs, thankfully they seem to be doing quite well for me! And thanks to having already figured out the humidity/moisture preferences of R.bilunata and extrapolating that methodology to these Peruvian cf. Rochaina metae, I was able to avoid any L1 mortality, seems they're all gonna make it to L2 with no issues. 😄

Will for sure keep you all posted on their progress, and the progress of the captive produced R.metae ooth, as once that ooth hatches I will have a much better idea as to the identity of these nymphs from the wild collected ooth.

Anyways, that does it for this post, thanks for reading, hope everyone enjoyed, and I'll see you all next time! 😉