Damon diadema with offspring

[Ranitomeya]

I lost the previous batch of offspring, but my female and her cohabiting male were quick to produce another group of babies. Invasive Argentine Ants are quite a menace during the summer months when they move in to search for moisture and food. My pair of adults were somehow left unmolested by the ants, but the babies were quickly swarmed and devoured in the same cage. A liberal application of baby powder around my tanks looks messy, but it's the only thing that manages to discourage ants in the room.

Here's a picture of a second instar next to a third instar with its exuvium. It was a bit difficult to take pictures of these little guys with my iPhone since they're small and they move quickly and frequently. They sure don't increase much in size from instar to instar. It makes you wonder how old the large, wild-caught individuals we see available are. Like the previous batch, these guys live with their parents.


I've been feeding them melanogaster and hydei fruitflies and they seem to be doing well on them. They also accept small first instar roaches, but I've been having difficulty maintaining the population size of my roach colony with all the hungry mouths to feed.

 

[Salmonsaladsandwich]

I'm glad I've never encountered problems with ants... Sounds terrible.

 

[Ranitomeya]

The babies are growing pretty quickly now that they're feeding on larger, gut-loaded roaches. Their  Fruit flies and newly hatched roaches don't make the most nutritionally balanced diet.

I had to hold back on feeding the adults by throwing in large roaches when I discovered a few of the offspring being munched on by the roaches, but it is no longer a problem now that they're larger and more than capable of taking on roaches their size. Despite the unfortunate casualties to ants and then the roaches I use for feeders, the large female Damon diadema has been quite capable of producing large numbers of offspring and I have around three dozen left that are past the point where I have to worry about them.

 

[Salmonsaladsandwich]

The water in the bottom is an interesting idea. Could you post a picture of the enclosure? Someone on another forum said that the cave walls where they live are sometimes dripping with water. And there's a smaller species from florida that can breathe underwater with an air bubble for several hours.

 

[Ranitomeya]

I've since added substrate so that I could keep some dwarf isopods for mold control. The little ones don't always finish their food and the substrate-less setup was getting rather moldy at the bottom.

There's very little ventilation since I've kept a piece of plastic completely covering the mesh on top. Water evaporates, condenses on the plastic, and drips back down, so there's water dripping onto the cork bark and keeping it moist. The substrate itself gets a little dry, but stays damp around the base of the cork.