Monday, January 1, 2018

Arenivaga bolliana Rehouse, Horrible Porcellio News & More

Happy New Year's everyone! 😀

Well, I finally rehoused my Arenivaga bolliana colony last week! I now have them housed in a gallon container with lots of ventilation, for the substrate I am using coconut fiber, which I am keeping dry, except for the very back, which I am keeping rather moist. They have lots of dead leaves on top of the substrate for food, as well as a food bowl with chick feed in it.

Here is a picture of their new enclosure:


Hopefully they'll enjoy their new habitat, and breed well in it! 😃

Also, forgot to write this in a previous post, but I found another newborn litter of babies in my Corydidarum pygmaea enclosure on December the 26th. This generation is breeding way faster than their predecessors, high ventilation = lots of babies and a short gestation period! 😁 Also, some of my females are boring into that rotten log I put in there, which is really cool!

Sadly, the New Year got off to a really bad start for my Porcellio bolivari, today I checked on their enclosure, only to find that TWO of my three females were dead, one of which was very gravid!!! 😩 It's my own dang fault too, I'm pretty sure the males (who are all fine), stressed out my females with mating attempts, which is exactly what happened to my Porcellio silvestrii at the beginning of this year.

I actually had planned to isolate the females as soon as I saw them getting gravid, but then I saw how well they were doing, and decided against disturbing them. I figured worst case scenario, one female would die at first, at which point I could separate the remaining two. But nope, because of my hesitation, now I'm left with just one small female, who I really hope is in good health. 😟

I've removed all of the males from the main enclosure, and will introduce one of them once I know she's OK. I did the same thing with my last female P.silvestrii, and now I have a couple dozen of them, so HOPEFULLY I can save my colony, we'll see... What a stupid mistake I've made!

Speaking of Spanish isopod woes, it seems I won't be breeding my Porcellio ornatus "South", as I sexed them last week, and they are all females. 😢 One died a month ago, but they were all mature at that time, so since none of my females are currently gravid, I'm gonna assume that one was a female as well. Maybe I'll get a male from a trade or something later on, but for now, it does not look like I'll be breeding this species.

Oh well, that does it for this post, hope everyone enjoyed, will see you all next time!

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