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Oh my goodness. I took a closer look at the substrate and I see tons of hairy grayish larvae that have 6 legs and are lighter colored on the underside. They walk pretty fast and can climb plastic surfaces. I don't know how these are related to the flies, since flies should come from maggots...

Over a month ago I bought 1k adult red runner roaches, and about half arrived dead, so I still had 500 which I put in a 10 gallon glass tank with soil substrate, egg cartons, and the roaches were fed dog food and fresh veggies. I've seen a lot of eggs but no baby roaches. The adults have been...

Don't be disappointed if they're very skittish at first. My adult female basalis almost drew blood twice. They had the death grip on me.

To be honest I got my original basalis stock from someone else, I raised them to adult and bred them, so I'm on my second generation. I've raised both valida and stalli and the ones I have right now look pretty different. Stalli lacked the bluish tint and the bright red abdomen. Valida had the...

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Generally half and half but you never know. Like if you toss 10 coins you are most likely to get around half heads, half tails, but more extreme ratios are also possible. 

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Did a trade with Aaliyah - all the mantises were lovingly packed in nicely designed enclosures, and arrived happy and healthy. Super fast shipping, lightning fast communication, and great packing. This trade meant a lot to me, she came to the rescue with this trade - I had been inbreeding my own...

I'm switching to roaches from crickets. Too many issues with crickets. Seems like no matter how much I clean their cages and how well I gutload them, the crickets still end up making my mantises sick every now and there. My rhombo female just finished recovering from a bout of "stomach flu"...

Well I see he's back today. Welcome back CosbyArt!

I've heard that orchids do badly with inbreeding. Yen said it's around 3 generations. I've probably already hit my max so that's why I'm adding new blood to my stock. I should've been adding fresh blood every year.  Over the generations, I have seen a decline in the percentage of ooths from...

I've been breeding orchids for 3 generations, and even though I've witnessed successful matings from 8 pairs of orchids, and ended up with over a dozen supposedly fertile ooths, only about 30% of the ooths were actually fertile. Fertility is determined by: after 6 weeks or so, I can see eyeballs...

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Rhombodera basalis is pretty skittish as nymphs, but very outgoing and aggressive as adults.  Stalli are the most aggressive. Had an adult female escape, eat her way into her sister's container (by chewing through the mesh), and proceeded to devour her sister. 

How long ago did she molt? 

Thanks for the fb, Andrew! (Sorry apparently I forgot to post a reply when you posted the fb last month). And thanks for the fb, Tyler! Glad we were able to work something out. Was really sad about what happened to my orchids...well, lesson learned, don't inbreed them, among other things. :P  

Last month I had a catastrophe with orchid nymphs dropping dead like flies. Some dropped dead after hatching, while others couldn't make it to L2, couldn't molt, and died. Factors I attributed the deaths to:  -bad genes (I've been breeding them sibling-to-sibling for 3 generations) -temps too...

I order my crickets online from cricket farms - you get a big box of 500 for $15 with free shipping. Each box lasts me around 1 month. The downside...you need to do a lot of work to maintain the crickets (feeding, cleaning, etc) and it makes more sense to order bulk crickets if you have a lot of...