Tuesday, January 21, 2020

Third Bantua Birth!

I've got good news and better news for you lot today regarding my Bantua sp. "Namibia" colony! 😀

So, upon further inspection, it seems there are at least 7, maybe 9 nymphs from last week's brood, so that brood was actually a decent sized one, almost makes me wonder if two females gave birth on the same day... Every single one seems very healthy and they all look like they're going to molt soon, so overall they're doing great!

However in even better news, yesterday while I was doing maintenance, I looked inside one of my corkboard hides, and found a female surrounded by pale, soft, newborn nymphs! 😁 I counted at least 5 nymphs around her, however it's entirely possible, nay, probable, that there were more I missed out of sight within the hide... 😃 I could also see the remnants of her ootheca within the hide, and it seems one nymph did fail to develop correctly and never hatched, but that's a somewhat normal occurrence in Blaberid broods.

I regret not getting any photos of the nymphs while they were still pale and new, but I really didn't want to stress them out any more than I already had. 😅 In the future when my colony is bigger I'll try to get pictures of any freshly born nymphs I find!

So anyways, it seems I was right in my hypothesis that my females all started gestating shortly after I added more ventilation to their enclosure over three months ago, as it seems I am now getting births on the regular. 😁 Let us hope that in no time, I will have a fully established colony of these cuties!

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

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