Beetles..!

 Hi everyone. Welcome to another blog post, and in this post I would like to share my beetles, as of right now. Because in the future I might have more species but this is just for now.

Anyway, let's get right into it.

Here, we have some Dermestes maculatus. You might be familiar with these from your feeder insect bins where these guys sometimes come together as a clean-up-crew. I am currently also trying to breed them as a clean-up-crew for roaches or some other animals in the future.

They eat almost everything, and they are also always hungry ahah 😅

Dermestes maculatus enclosure

Here are the two remaining adults still alive. I say this because most of the adult beetles have died of old age, but not to worry because there are still some larvae hidden in the substrate.

Deceased adult

Second species here is a smaller species. I guess we'll go from biggest to smallest in size.

But they are Alphitobius diaperinus, A.K.A Buffalo beetles. You are probably also familiar with these guys with the same reason as the D. maculatus but the larvae of this species is also usually used as a feeder for small herps, fish, or other small inverts.

Alphitobius diaperinus enclosure

It is fairly hard to get a picture of these, because as shown below they do burrow and are also pretty fast at it.

Alphitobius diaperinus burrowing

Anyway, let's end off this post with really small guys.

Let me introduce you to the Rice Weevil, Sitophilus oryzae! These guys are super tiny and are usually found inhabiting rice, as the same suggests.. but they are also really good at breeding and my colony is slowly but surely growing with the amount of adults.

Alright, I know it might look like it has extremely low ventilation. Because it does... But they seem to have been doing really, really well with it. Not sure if more ventilation would make a difference but I am currently keeping them like this.

They are tiiiny!

They also might not look like much from the camera like this, but when you really get a good look..

You get to see GORGEOUS golden spots on its elytra.

And I guess that's it for all the beetles.

But to stay on the topic of tiny inverts, I have something quite exciting to show you.

A while ago I got a female Pardosa pseudoannulata who I did not know was actually pregnant. I thought it was just fat from eating a lot, but then it made an egg sac and I knew I was gonna get hundreds of spiders 😅

And here we have momma spider carrying her precious little slings. 😁

But anyway, that's all for this post. Thank you for reading and have a great day! 🙏