Roaches In The Pink

In the pink, meaning "in very good health and spirits", which certainly seems to be the case for my Gyna capucina. 😜 Yes, my pink roaches are doing very well, the smaller nymphs are eating, molting, and appear to be thriving in the setup, seeming to prefer the drier areas of the enclosure.

The lone adult male is still alive, and while his wings appear a bit tattered, and he doesn't hold his antennae as straight as he used to, he's still pretty active and agile. I sincerely hope he is still fertile and can breed, because guess what I just found in the enclosure near the feeding area? That's right, an adult female! 😁

I knew one of the larger nymphs I received was a female, but I wasn't expecting her to mature so soon, fingers crossed it was soon enough for her to mate with the adult male before he gets too old, because I'm pretty sure no other nymphs are close to maturing... I mean I've got tons of tiny nymphs, so I'm sure I'll have a breeding population in a year anyways, but it'd be nice to get some offspring from this female as well.

Anyways, this female is quite beautiful, but not nearly as pink as other females I've seen, (this species appears to have quite variable adult coloration). The base coloration is pink but she's covered in lots of brown/black mottling, I don't know if I've ever seen such a dark looking G.capucina female before. I personally like the look, but I may attempt to refine the pink coloration in this strain in the future, so that most individuals are a more solid pink, (similar in theory to the more refined G.lurida "Yellow" strain Roachcrossing sold in the past).

Well, here are some pictures I snapped of both adults, (mostly the female obviously!):

The adult male

Now the BEAUTIFUL adult female!!!

This one's SO similar to an old pic of my male...

She's so pretty isn't she? And a lot bulkier than the male too! She seems very healthy, and will hopefully mate with the male and produce some babies for me soon! 😊

I would also like to note that the grain mites these came with have been virtually eradicated, however the cotton springtails appear to be breeding somewhat minimally, and it appears a type of fast moving predatory/soil mite has taken root in the enclosure, looks like a species I've run into in the past... Luckily they don't tend to bother roaches, especially burrowing ones, so the Gyna should be fine, really all I care about is making sure there aren't any large populations of grain mites in the enclosure, and it seems I've accomplished that, one way or another!

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