California Arenivaga Curse Continues?

Earlier last year, I had a line on a possible small starter group of WC Arenivaga cf. investigata "Imperial Dunes, CA", namely a WC adult female that had been exposed to a (very short lived) adult male, and five mixed nymphs. Unfortunately, me and the person with them kinda lost touch, and by the time we reconnected, he only had the one WC female, plus three of the nymphs had matured into virgin females as well (the other nymph presumably died). None of the ooths the WC female laid have hatched for the original owner, which could be husbandry related, or may simply be a result of said female not actually being mated...

So all in all the group is very sketchy in terms of being able to produce a next generation from it, however the previous owner says he's going back to the spot where he found them, and may find more this year, so hopefully he'll be able to send me more individuals to buff up the culture and actually allow me to squeeze out a second generation from them, fingers crossed... 🤞 Because until then it's looking like the dreaded CA Arenivaga curse has extended to this group, unless the old WC female starts making ooths that are actually viable. 😅

Anyways, I've got the four females now, and I must say they look essentially identical to the species I got two virgin females of from the Algodones Sand dunes back in 2017 (and probably are the same species TBH). Very pretty Arenivaga, I REALLY hope I can find a way to breed these. They arrived a bit dehydrated/starved looking, but lively, and seem to slowly be plumping back up with good access to moisture and food.

I've got them set up in a small, well ventilated container with an inch or so of coconut fiber as the substrate, with a bit of leaf litter on top. Keeping a third of the substrate humid, the rest dry, and feeding them dog food in addition to the leaf litter. Keeping them at around 75-85F°.

Here are some pictures of one of the younger adult females:

I love how fuzzy and rotund this species is! 😊 Such a cute little sand roach, it would be awesome if that older WC female still had some sperm left in her... We'll see I guess. 🤷‍♂️

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BTW, on an unrelated note, I've finally bought the domain "invertebratedude.com"! 😃 Which is now the address for this blog (though typing in invertebratedude.blogspot.com will still redirect you here, so all older links to my blog online will still work). Makes the site seem a little more official now, and easier to search. 😊 I've also incorporated all my caresheets from my caresheet blogs onto this site in the form of pages, so that way all my info is here on invertebratedude.com, rather than spread across a couple different domain names.

I have also changed the background for the first time in years, instead of a teneral Rhabdoblatta rustica, I changed it to a picture of a bunch of Oniscus asellus "Mardi Gras Dalmatian". This is an isopod morph that I was the original person to isolate, so it only seems fitting that they should be the invertebrate shown in the background of my blog.

I also changed the width of the blog, so that more focus is put on the actual posts themselves, rather than leaving so much space on either side just to see the background image better. This has allowed me to increase the image size on each post as well, so it'll be easier for people to see the images I post on all devices. However this means I now have to go through 700+ posts and increase the image size on all of them... So that'll be a nice project for the next few days or so. 😂

Hopefully these changes will be positive ones, and help make my blog a more comfortable and easy to use resource of information and images for fellow hobbyists to enjoy.

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