Some Darkling, Roach & 'Pod Updates!

This year I was able to successfully rear and pupate two Cryptoglossa variolosa larvae... not a fantastic batch, but hey, better than nothing. The main hurdle has been getting my WC adults to produce offspring regularly, I've tried a variety of sand and clay mixes to trigger oviposition, and am now going with a more organic mix. 🤷

I've been having great luck in general with pupating mature Cryptoglossa and Asbolus larvae by placing them into empty, minimally ventilated deli cups kept within an unventilated shoebox, filled with standing water. This keeps ambient humidity very high, while the surface moisture stays dry, so they won't rot. They'll pupate without substrate so long as the ambient humidity is high enough, and the temps are high enough as well (85F° or higher for best results). After they've eclosed into adults and darkened to a reddish color, I'll usually take them out and throw them into a larger, well ventilated cup with bone dry substrate for a couple weeks, with a moist corner or fruit slices for hydration. 

Using this method I've reared more A.mexicanus to adulthood this year, possibly than in all the years I've kept this species going, so that's great!

Anywho, here are some pics of one of the C.variolosa I reared, teneral and fully darkened. Unfortunately this one came out with a very slight elytral deformity, and there's a small gap down the middle where the elytra would normally be fused. Shouldn't really effect the longevity of the adult with such a small gap IMO.

Teneral

Fully hardened/darkened

Here's hoping I can figure out a more consistent oviposition trigger for this particular species, so I can rear more up consistently. 😄

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My Ellipsidion amplum have been laying lots of ooths, which should probably start hatching here soon. 😁 The larger ooths seem to contain around 40 eggs each, which is crazy, and they don't lay them too infrequently either. Something tells me I will have tons of these guys here soon. 😅

Here's hoping for hatchlings soon! 🤞

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So far so good with my high orange Princisa vanwaerebeki "Tiger" line breeding project, I think I've settled on a final morph name for these; "Bengal". The males and females from this generation are coming out similarly orange as their parents, and I think after one more generation of line breeding they might be ready for release. 😄

Really looking forward to seeing how this project comes along, and am pleased with the results thus far. 😊

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Kyle from Roachcrossing recently sent me a mated, adult female Homalosilpha alba, and she's been doing pretty well in my care. This has been a holy grail genus for me personally, as most members of this genus have strikingly patterned nymphs, and this species is no exception. 😁 All members of this genus are highly flattened, and spend most of their time underneath bark in the wild.

I initially had her in a vertical jar setup, but she seemed to be having trouble traversing that setup, at least with the bark pieces I chose for her. So she's now in a moderately ventilated bin with an inch or so of coco fiber substrate, topped with coco coir chunks and horizontally stacked, flat bark hides. I'm keeping half or so of the substrate damp, the rest dry, and am aiming for high air humidity but low surface moisture on the bark hides. I'm feeding her dog food and fruits, and have her at around 80-85F°.

The first ooth she laid for me was fairly small and deformed looking, but after increasing the ambient humidity she produced a much healthier, normal looking ooth. Hopefully there will be many more where that came from! 😄

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My first batch of 5 Prionotheca coronata larvae have grown quite large, and must be nearing pupation size now. And the other 25 or so younger larvae produced from a different female have been doing great and are growing quickly as well!

I plan to try and pupate them the same as I've outlined above in this post for Asbolus and Cryptoglossa, as they appear to have very similar rearing habits to say, Asbolus mexicanus larvae so far. I'll probably wait until I see them try to make pupal cells in their current deli cups to properly gauge mature size in this species, before I start throwing them into pupation cups. 

We've surpassed length of some of my more medium adults, as you can see here. So they are probably only a couple molts away from pupation age IMO, at most. But, we shall wait and see! 

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Alan Jeon sent me probably the last Arenivaga investigata "Imperial Dunes" female in culture a couple months back, thankfully she has already been mated, and been busy with laying ooths in my care. Said ooths have started hatching, and I'm confident I'll be able to restart a colony of this locality stock, and hopefully spread them back around in culture once more. 😊

This locality gets larger and more rotund than other investigata lines I keep, and IMO this species probably represents a complex of cryptic species... but that's for people far more learned than me to judge, for now I'm just happy to get these cuties breeding for me again. 😄

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Lastly, but not least, thanks to a trade with Jo Lyn, I have finally acquired a culture of the coveted Cubaris sp. "Crabby"! 😁 You can watch me unbox them here BTW, I've been trying to be a lot more active on YouTube lately, and have been filming and uploading most of my unboxings this past year. 

These are a large, flat, and colorful species with unique morphology, and supposedly aren't too difficult to culture, just rather slow growing/breeding.

I've got mine in a moderately ventilated gallon shoebox, with an inch or so of coco fiber substrate, topped with coco coir chunks, lots of bark and leaf litter. I'm keeping them pretty humid, and at around 75-80F°. For supplemental food, I'm offering them dog food and fish food pellets.

I really love the morphology of this species, and they get quite large for a "Cubaris". I really hope these do well for me, as it's a species I've been eyeing for quite a while. 

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

Archimandrita tesselata VS Archimandrita marmorata

In yet another case of an old hobby stock being misidentified for decades, it has been revealed that the common "Archimandrita tesselata" stock that's been in captivity for as long as I can remember is actually, Archimandrita marmorata. 

Whereas the larger, newer Archimandrita stocks from "Cerro Chucanti, Panama" (of which there is a US hobby line and EU hobby line, both collected at different times by different people, but from the same general locality) is actually true Archimandrita tesselata. 

Thanks to Alan Jeon for initially keying these two stocks out by referencing this paper. In addition to A.tesselata being a larger species than A.marmorata, the interocular space (the space between the eyes) is wider in A.marmorata than in A.tesselata. 

The old hobby stock Archimandrita are significantly smaller than the new Panama stocks, and do have a wider interocular space, which clearly keys them out to actually be A.marmorata. 

Whereas the Panama Archimandrita are significantly larger than the old hobby stock, and have a thinner interocular space, thus clearly making them true A.tesselata.

A.tesselata "Cerro Chucanti"

A.marmorata "Old Hobby Stock"

Yet more labels to correct for all us pet roach hobbyists, and I am unfortunately sure there will be much confusion about the two stocks now... but at least we can now confirm we have both of the currently known Archimandrita species in culture now! 😅 And now know how to differentiate them as well.

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

Zopherus nodulosus haldemani Breeding Project!

Back in July, I received a breeding group of Zopherus nodulosus haldemani adults, the beautiful "Texas Ironclad Beetle". This is my first foray into Zopheridae, and I figured what better species to start with than arguably the prettiest of the US natives? 😆 

Unfortunately, quite little is known about the breeding and larval development of this species, and so information on their rearing is scarce. The adults in question were found in a fairly humid (at least for TX), forested environment, found climbing the trunks of trees in the late afternoon. So this helps shed some light on the type of habitat they are found in, and so I set them up accordingly. 

I initially set my adults up in a temporary, minimally ventilated enclosure with a base layer of flake soil substrate, topped with lots of vertically slanted hardwood bark pieces and and lichen covered sticks. I kept the substrate moist, but left the bark pretty dry, and in addition to the lichen, I offered dog food and apple slices. Temps were in the 75-85F° range.

Adults are lichen feeders in the wild, and in addition to offering lichen, I tried making a lichen substitute for them (see more in my video here). Unfortunately they don't seem to be eating the artificial diet much (though the springtails in their enclosure are going nuts over it), though it seems they must be feeding on the apple and/or dog food I'm offering them, as they ran out of actual lichen a while ago and still seem to be going strong.

To my delight, shortly after arrival, the adults oviposited readily on the vertical standing bark, laying eggs in between flakey layers of underbark and in crevices of more heavily textured/craggy bark (you can see footage I took of the eggs here). Their oviposition method closely mirrors that of Chalcolepidius spp. I've worked with, which I find interesting. 

The eggs took maybe a week or so to develop, before hatching into absolutely tiny, pretty active larvae. There were several dozen of them climbing around, they seemed to spend little time on the substrate and instead preferred to climb around on the bark.

I isolated 30 or so of these L1 larvae to their own minimally ventilated deli cups (since Zopherid larvae are supposedly quite cannibalistic), each with a thin layer of flake soil substrate, topped in a small piece of bark. For some, I offered fish food pellets as a supplemental food option, others I did not. I kept all of them pretty humid, and at around 75-80F°.

Unfortunately, all larvae died within a week or two of isolation, and pretty much all died around the same time. I am unsure if conditions were too moist, not moist enough, if the substrate/hide choices were not to their liking (perhaps a more bark oriented setup would have been preferable), or if they have more specific dietary needs than just rotten wood and/or a protein source... Unfortunately due to their extremely small size making them difficult to monitor, and the way in which they all died around the same time, I was unable to get a good idea of what exactly went wrong.

The adults, which are still alive and well, were moved to a larger, though slightly shorter enclosure, set up much the same as the previous setup, though the bark hides do not stand as straight vertically as they did in the smaller setup. They have unfortunately stopped breeding, and no more eggs have been produced since that first wave.

It's possible this could be due to running out of actual lichen in their diet, which could be necessary for triggering oviposition. It could be that they need more verticality to their setup to trigger oviposition, and that the new, shorter setup is inadequate. 

But the most likely reason, I am starting to suspect, is that they are seasonal breeders, which means they are probably not going to breed again until next Spring/Summer (and may require a mild cooling period in the winter to trigger them to breed next year). This sucks, but at least the adults are rather long lived, so hopefully I'll get another chance at breeding them next year. 🤞

Adults

L1 larva

Unfortunate that I was unable to get further than this, but at least the preferred medium and hide orientation for oviposition has been confirmed and recorded, and it seems specific fungi or wood types are not needed for that particular stage. Seasonal cues may be required for reproduction, though that has yet to be confirmed. Adults will seemingly accept a variety of food for survival, though it's uncertain whether lichen is needed to trigger reproduction.

As far as larval care goes, we still need some major breakthroughs, and we can not rule out the necessity of specific fungi mycelium or substrate/surface area types for the successful rearing of larvae. 

I'll keep trying with these beauties, and will update y'all with any discoveries or breakthroughs I may make, for now though I just wanted to thoroughly document and present my experience with them thus far.

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

Phone Photo Dumps & Updates!

Hybridizing hissers is honestly more complicated than I'd thought... It seems some crosses, while not necessarily impossible, are at the very least quite difficult to do successfully, have a high failure rate, and the resulting offspring may not always be fertile themselves. My first ever intergeneric "tri-brid" offspring were unfortunately sickly and did not survive past L4. This may have been a fluke, as only two offspring were born, seemingly prematurely, but while I'm continuing to attempt to recreate this cross, no new litters have been born. 

I've managed to get a SINGLE offspring by crossing female Princisia vanwaerebeki "Tiger" to male Elliptorhina davidi, which seems to be a healthy individual, but mostly the females have just been aborting their ooths far before developing them fully. 

Attempts to cross Elliptorhina laevigata males to female Gromphadorhina portentosa "Masoala" have consistently ended in failure, as have attempts to cross Gromphadorhina oblongonota males to Aeluropoda insignis females. 

All of this is to say that some crosses definitely seem more viable than others, and the success of the cross might come down to hard to recreate variables, not just in husbandry but also in the size and morphological compatibility of the individuals chosen for crossing.

One cross that seems to work pretty consistently though, is crossing Gromphadorhina portentosa to Princisia vanwaerebeki, and one such project in my collection are these Gromphadorhina portentosa "Masoala" × Princisia vanwaerebeki "Big/Black × Androhamana". The F1 adult males all look pretty much like portentosa in coloration, but have morphology more similar to Princisia (especially the pronotum morphology). The F1 adult females have been more variable in coloration but all have striped abdomens.

I haven't bothered giving this cross a nothospecies name yet, as I don't know whether they're worth keeping or not. I've isolated a couple of the most impressive adults for line breeding, the goal would be to consistently have adults with bright orange abdomens, preferably very stripey on both sexes (though I'll settle for just the females being striped), and males that consistently have that more Princisia-like pronotum morphology. Breeding for size would also be nice, and these seem to consistently throw out majors already at F1, but I'll see if line breeding can have any compounding effect on that.

Here's hoping for some interesting results in the F2 of this cross!

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I was gifted two species of Pelmatosilpha spp. earlier this year by Alan Jeon... and unfortunately have failed with both.

My Pelmatosilpha sp. "Manati, PR" did well at first, growing quite fast, and I still have several adult males that are healthy and doing well. Unfortunately, all of the females (of which there were far less than males), grew up deformed and sickly, and I ended up with no healthy adult females... so now I've only got males. 😩

Pelmatosilpha sp. "Manati, PR"

It would seem this genus prefers dry hides, and very high air humidity. Unfortunately for the Pelmatosilpha coriacea "Air Bnb, PR" Alan sent me, I kept them quite moist, and the hides I gave them got rather soggy. So only one of those survived longer than a couple weeks, though after correcting the issue it did make it to adulthood, (ironically, a healthy adult female).

Pelmatosilpha coriacea "Air Bnb, PR"

Quite a pretty genus, it's unfortunate that I messed up with the P.coriacea so badly, and TBH I've no idea what happened with the P.sp. "Manati"... Sometimes luck's just not on your side. But I wanted to share the few pics of these spp. that I got anyways.

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I really thought that my one female Therea petiveriana that has matured thus far, did so AFTER my first adult male died... And I know for a fact no other males have matured since then. However, evidently, she did mature before he kicked the bucket, and just evaded my detection until after he died, because not only did she lay lots of ooths (larger ooths, higher in volume than is normal for unmated female roaches), but a month or so ago, I started finding hatchlings in the enclosure! 

So, I've successfully secured a second generation of these beauties in my collection, and still have some large nymphs from last generation I'm waiting on to mature (hopefully even more in sync than my last two adults). 😄

Awesome news all around for the US hobby regarding Therea, hopefully next year I can make both true T.petiveriana, and T.sp."Pachmarhi" available for the first time here! 😁

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Earlier this year, I received what was supposed to be a 1.2 group of Anomalipus elephas, a very large and morphologically unique species of darkling beetle from South Africa. Unfortunately though, as is often the case with WC Tenebs, they were misidentified, and actually a mix of two species... 1 male A.elephas, and 2 A.mastodon.

Where A.elephas are a very sexually dimorphic species, with large, gorilla looking males, A.mastodon are not sexually dimorphic, and I've honestly no clue what sex mine are. They are also significantly smaller than at least major male A.elephas, and don't have nearly as dramatic morphology as that species... so I am quite bummed out that I didn't end up with a breeding group of elephas. However, I'll be even more bummed if both my A.mastodon are males as well, so I'm really hoping they're mated females or a sexed pair... 🤞😅

I've got all three housed together in the same enclosure, since they're found sympatrically in the wild, hybridization shouldn't be an issue (and if they're all males after all, it'll be even less of an issue... 🥲). They're in a large,  well ventilated enclosure with a couple inches of substrate, a mix of coco fiber, coco coir chunks, aged sawdust, sand, and leaf litter. I'm keeping two thirds of the enclosure humid, the rest dry (these prefer more humid conditions compared to desert darkling spp.). They're kept at around 75-80F°, and I'm feeding them dog food and fruit slices (they also seem to love eating leaf litter).

A.elephas male

A.mastodon

Unfortunate that I didn't end up with a breeding group of A.elephas, though I'd still be happy to get offspring from the A.mastodon. Their breeding season starts around October, so if either of the mastodon is a female (and being WC, they should be mated and have sperm retained), then I can expect to see eggs being laid around then. This genus is apparently not too picky about oviposition medium, and I think the substrate in their enclosure is pretty optimal for that task, so if I don't find offspring this Fall/Winter, I'll have to assume the mastodon are both males as well... so we shall see.

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Last, but not least, a Rochaina spp. update! 

Unfortunately, my R.bilunata have contracted a Serratia infection, and are not taking it well at all. I don't even know how they could have contracted it, and it makes me wary of certain pests like grain mites or phorid flies possibly being vectors for that bacteria...

Several nymphs have died before making it to maturity, and several more have matured into quite deformed and unhealthy adults, almost all of which have died within a week or two of maturing. There is one adult female that is holding out and actually does seem healthy (though her wings are quite deformed), and has been alive for several weeks now. However, none of the remaining male nymphs are particularly close to maturity, and there's only one or two female nymphs left. So the odds are not looking favorable at all, and the conditions that would hinder the effects of Serratia (namely dry, low humidity conditions) would kill my remaining R.bilunata faster... 

Thus, I am doomed to stay the course in terms of husbandry, watch them grow and die and just hope that at least ONE healthy female and ONE healthy male mature within each other's adult lifespan, mate and produce ooths... even just one good ooth, and I could secure another generation (and isolate it from the parents in a sterile environment, to prevent the offspring from also contracting Serratia). 

I'll try my best of course, but obviously I am not holding my breath for the R.bilunata...

In more positive news, my R.metae, unhindered by disease, are thriving! The females have been laying oothecae at a pretty good pace, and I am confident I have secured a next generation. 😁 Really looking forward to seeing hatchlings of this species again, hopefully by November/December. 🤞

Female laying an ooth

Really weird looking when they're making their oothecae! Also, I've noticed they do seem to have an upper limit of 12-15 adults per 5 gallons, before they start bullying and killing each other. Not a very communal genus for sure, and seemingly one that does not benefit from the allee effect. 

I've written a caresheet for this genus now, the first of it's kind, and I hope it will prove a valuable resource for those looking into breeding this and related genera. 😁 I also went back and updated a bunch of my older caresheets with new husbandry information I've compiled over the past couple years, as well as nomenclature updates. Wrote up a couple other new sheets as well, and hope to write more soon.

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