My First CB Eleodes nigrina Adults!

Well, I've done it, I've reared up my first Eleodes nigrina adults, which is almost certainly a first for the hobby, and perhaps a first for science too! 😁 The first two adults eclosed on the night of 7/13, both appear to be males, and they had darkened completely by the next day. I of course moved them to more well ventilated deli cups with a thin layer of drier substrate, my typical Teneb rearing protocol. A female has since matured as well, hopefully more are on the way!

Unfortunately they've still got quite a few grain mites on them, which thankfully are already dispersing from them in small numbers and will likely be completely destroyed by the predatory mites in the main enclosure once I add them to it. So not too much of a concern, but it's annoying that the literally the one Eleodes species I currently have that I wanted to document all life stages of happened to be the only darkling species in my collection to have a grain mite outbreak... 🙃 But that's life I guess.

Anyways, here are pictures of one of the freshly matured males, covered in grain mites:

Here it is, freshly matured still:

Same individual, darkened by the next day:

Gonna let them harden up in isolation for another week or so, then I'll dump them into the breeding enclosure and hopefully get the next generation going, at which point I'll probably be able to start selling larvae, fingers crossed! 🤞

Speaking of which, I've got some other Eleodes larvae available right now, the "For Sale" page has been resurrected, check it out, the availability is a bit limited at the moment, but that will hopefully change in the coming months! 

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