Big Crickets & a Short Beetle Update

My Ceuthophilus gracilipes gracilipes are maturing! 😁 I've actually had some adult females mature for a couple weeks now, but they are somewhat small/medium sized adults, I've been waiting on my one huge looking female to mature for pictures, and she just matured the other week! 😄 I've also finally got a mature male as well, so breeding has officially started! 

Here are some pictures of my massive female and my first adult male:

Adult female

Adult male

Such an impressive species! 😍 As you can see, adults have quite glossy exoskeletons, compared to the duller, matte texture of the exoskeletons of nymphs, so this makes telling nymphs apart from adults pretty easy IMO. I'm so glad I've got healthy adults of both sexes now, really looking forward to seeing babies in a short while! 😄

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Now for the short beetle update... Unfortunately, my last remaining Iphthiminus serratus larvae died before the New Year, which I think is my fault, I moved it from it's old container to the container my other larva had pupated in, since it was a bigger deli cup and seemed more conducive to pupal cell construction. However, the larva refused to burrow in this new setup for some reason, despite seeming perfectly healthy, laid on the top of the substrate for a week, and then died. So I was able to rear a grand total of 1 Iphthiminus serratus larvae up to adulthood... 🙃

Kind of sad, but TBH, that's better than I've done with any other Cnodalonini species before... At first I tried breeding Coelocnemis, never got any offspring. Then I tried breeding Alobates, got lots of offspring but couldn't rear any up to adulthood at all. Then I tried breeding these Iphthiminus, and reared one up to adulthood successfully... So I'm making incremental progress each time I try with this tribe, which is a plus I guess. 😅

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