One such species is my culture of Pseudoglomeris magnifica "Kunming, Yunnan, China - Copper". Seemingly as a result of the slightly warmer temps, two of my subadult males have matured already, and I've got a sub female who's looking like she'll molt soon as well (most of the other females are further behind in development for some reason, as well as the other males).
One neat thing about this strain is their bright coloration compared to the other "Copper /" Chinese localities sold by vendors (like the ones on MyHomeNature). These "Kunming" are a much brighter copper color, with hints of lime green iridescence on the exoskeleton. They're quite beautiful, though unfortunately my camera often dulls their coloration greatly, unless they're out of focus for whatever reason. 😅
So, here are some pictures of one of the males, most of the pictures that are actually in focus dull his coloration a lot, so I included some out of focus images I'd normally delete, just to show off more accurate coloration:
A beaut, isn't he? 😍 Looking forward to having a mature female soon as well, and then hopefully they can get to breeding!
My Setomima nitida have been doing fantastic, and are surprisingly quite popular for such a niche invert. 😁
Anyways, I realized I've never taken pictures of their larvae before, so while packing some up for a customer a couple weeks ago, I rectified that:
I find the larvae cute, for a maggot at least. They don't revolt me like the larvae of Phorid flies and House flies and the like.
Lastly, in interesting news, some small, hairy fungus beetles, Typhaea stercorea, have started popping up in my collection. So far I've only been finding like, one or two at a time in random roach bins, they're very fast and slippery little beetles, so I haven't been able to catch many to try and start a decent colony of them. The other week I was able to collect TWO from my Paranauphoeta formosana bin, so hopefully it's a pair or at least one of them's a mated female. 😅
I'll keep collecting them as I find them though, I'm a fan of this family of beetles, and I once bred a significantly larger (and prettier) species of hairy fungus beetle years ago, though sadly they died out after F1 was achieved (they may have needed a diapause TBH).
I've got my two T.stercorea adults housed in a minimally ventilated 2 oz deli cup with about a cm of moist coco fiber at the bottom. On top of this I placed two pieces of dog food, which I've allowed to completely mold over, and it seems the beetles are in fact eating the mold (this species is cosmopolitan and most often associated with moldy stored food products, so obviously food molds seem like the best food source for this species in culture). Here's hoping this works to produce larvae, it my adults are a breedable pair that is. 😅
Here are some pictures of the tiny little things (they're only about 3 mms long):
Well, that does it for this post, thanks for reading, hope everyone enjoyed, stay safe, and I'll see you all next time! 😉
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