This is my dream isopod species, and they've been on my wishlist for years! Can't believe I actually have some in my collection now! 😊 Let's hope I can breed them successfully, these are one of the trickiest of the Spanish isopods to culture, and they are very finicky!
I have mine in a plastic container with lots of ventilation, and coconut fiber as the substrate. There are lots of bark slabs for hides, and plenty of leaf litter on top of that. I am keeping most of the enclosure very dry, with one moist corner, which has a clump of New Zealand sphagnum moss in it to retain moisture. I'll be feeding them chick feed, in addition to the dead leaves.
Here are some pictures of them:
The males have much longer uropods than the females, so once they get big enough, it is very easy to sex them! The first two pictures for example, seem to be of a female, the rest are of a male. I am very happy to add this species to my collection, I really hope they'll do well for me! 😄
Well, that's gonna do it for today's post, thanks for reading everybody, will see you all soon! 😉
Finally, my blog is resuming normal operations
ReplyDeleteThis is a reply to your comments on the previous post
1. Yes, you said yourself that Hymenorus adults may not eat: https://invertebratedude.blogspot.com/2015/03/combclawed-beetle-unknown-sp.html
2. I've noticed that your "for sale" is gone again. Are you still able to buy invertebrates?
3. If the answer to 2 is yes, then you have good news
I was digging around for research articles and found an extremely long paper from archive.org stating that the Oligotomidae are the easiest and most adaptable footspinners to keep. I strongly suspect that my local species is Oligotoma nigra (saundersii does not occur west of TX), so they should not be hard. Also, I have emailed you about them.
Yay, glad to hear it! :)
DeleteOh man that was a long time ago lol! Yeah they definitely eat, saw some feeding on wildflowers this year actually. (Didn't bother collecting any though).
Yeah, it's cold here now, so I'm gonna have to get some heat packs before shipping stuff out again, (and orders shipped to me will need heat packs too).
Unfortunately, I think I will have to pass on those webspinners for now. I'm actually planning on trimming my collection down a bit right now, since some of my species are gonna need to be rehoused to bigger cages soon, so unless I get rid of some stuff, I'm not going to have room for their new cages! I've also got plans on getting some rare roaches around Christmas time, (I'm hoping at least), so I really do need as much space as possible, webspinners just don't fit into my agenda at the moment. :(
Sorry for leading you on man, maybe next year if I have more room!