PhilinYuma
Well-known member
O.K.. I admit it, I have not bred anything since the end of last year, mostly because of my vacation time in Jan and early Feb. Last November, though, Precarious sent me a nice Gambian ooth, Pseudoharpax virescens, and I raised the young in a small net cage to see how many would survive communal living. The answer was not many (the container was probably too small. I shall use 12" cubes exclusively in future), but enough boys and girls for breeding purposes. I ended up with two males, one with "crinkled wings after a bad final molt, and three females, which eclosed to adult late last week. I still didn't separate them, and though the perfect male has been eying one of the females since yesterday, she showed no interest and I did not see her "calling". Still too young, I thought, after only one week of adulthood Today, I moved the small cage into the "real" bug room, which I am redoing, including the installation of ultrasonic humidifiers. These pack more of a wallop than the heater kind and don't require distilled water -- which would be a major problem and expense at five or more gals/day).
I set up an ultrasonic humidifier at full blast and moved a flood lamp so that the cage was about 80F and 80%RH This is not as easily done as it sounds, since rising temp tends to lower humidity and vice versa. Within an hour of reaching these parameters, though the male had mounted the female and four hours later, they are still in cop.
The value of increased humidity in mating is old news, but not much discussed on this forum. I shall be getting some Creobroter pictipennis in the next week or so, and another member has offered to work on some breeding experiments with a group of his own. I shall be interested to see if the nymphs do well (i.e. molt safely) with a RH of around 40% and then mate when the humidity is dramatically increased to 80%+ as happens in countries that have a monsoon climate or thrive on the high humidity throughout their lives.
There has bee a fair bit of discussion about the value of hygrometers in the past. Some folks don't see a need for them, others have doubtful results because their hygrometer (just about anything that I've seen in a pet store) is inaccurate. I use several Caliber III digital thermometer/hygrometers desihgned for humidors. They are small enough to fit in a 32 oz pot and you can buy a test kit when you get one, to test its accuracy. I have been impressed. I have tried several humidifiers of both kinds, including Consumer Report's top listed "adorable penguin", and the best one, so far is Crane's 21/2 gal/day machine.
I hope that members will share their information on this topic; I am always happy to have others do my work for me!
I set up an ultrasonic humidifier at full blast and moved a flood lamp so that the cage was about 80F and 80%RH This is not as easily done as it sounds, since rising temp tends to lower humidity and vice versa. Within an hour of reaching these parameters, though the male had mounted the female and four hours later, they are still in cop.
The value of increased humidity in mating is old news, but not much discussed on this forum. I shall be getting some Creobroter pictipennis in the next week or so, and another member has offered to work on some breeding experiments with a group of his own. I shall be interested to see if the nymphs do well (i.e. molt safely) with a RH of around 40% and then mate when the humidity is dramatically increased to 80%+ as happens in countries that have a monsoon climate or thrive on the high humidity throughout their lives.
There has bee a fair bit of discussion about the value of hygrometers in the past. Some folks don't see a need for them, others have doubtful results because their hygrometer (just about anything that I've seen in a pet store) is inaccurate. I use several Caliber III digital thermometer/hygrometers desihgned for humidors. They are small enough to fit in a 32 oz pot and you can buy a test kit when you get one, to test its accuracy. I have been impressed. I have tried several humidifiers of both kinds, including Consumer Report's top listed "adorable penguin", and the best one, so far is Crane's 21/2 gal/day machine.
I hope that members will share their information on this topic; I am always happy to have others do my work for me!
