New Setups, Plant Invaders, and More!

 Hello. Today I would like to share some random things that I did, and also if I do post two times a day it's because I just have a random post schedule so I hope you don't mind anything 😅

But anyway, I have some more things to share. Let's start with some enclosure re-do's that I did today.

I redid my Hemidactylus frenatus (Common house gecko) enclosure. I switched out the substrate to a much more moist and humid-holding CocoPeat and provided more sphagnum together with more structure since these guys love to climb and live in humid climates.

Pretty basic and simple enclosure, and also there is something I would like to say about him.

He is super fast. And I mean it, I can never touch him, ever, lol.

One moment, he's here.

In the blink of an eye, he's on the enclosure wall.


And then he's back in the hide once again.

Gotta love these Hemidactylus species haha 😆 

Next we have some cherry shrimp.


It is a large critter keeper with black gravel as the substrate and some random algae/moss, Amazon frog bits, Valisneria, and Egeria densa. 

I was trying to go for a swampy themed setup and I guess it was kinda achieved..? What do you think?

But let me spill some shrimp pics





The plastic of the tank is a bit foggy so yeah it might restrict some view in the tank.

Alright this one is probably a creature that aquatic keepers absolutely abominate, they breed quick and can be harmful to snails or smaller fish.

That includes me, I usually hate them. But I really wanted to try keeping them as a colony.

So uhh, yeah I guess.




These are I suspect Girardia tigrina. But it's not so easy to identify these Dugesiidae so it's not certain to be this species.

I have two enclosures for these, just wanted to see how they will do if there even is much of a difference.

The ones you just saw above was in a small acrylic container with a sliding lid. 


The other group is in a larger and slightly taller plastic deli container.





I observed that the ones in larger space prefer to perch on the plants or occasionally slither around on the substrate while the ones in a smaller space prefer to stay on the walls.

Not sure why, but I guess the most logical explanation I could think of is because of the crammed rock in the middle and plants circling it reducing the space, but they can still go under the rock and below the floating plants while the larger enclosure is also extremely crammed with plants as shown below. 

But yeah, I guess it's because of the big rock in the middle but that's just a guess. I bet there are lots hiding under the rock. 😄


Plastic enclosure

Anyway, last but not least I want to show you this absolute beast of a grasshopper, a Valanga nigricornis. 


Valanga nigricornis feeding on some leaves

I might get more but not so much that it will cram the enclosure because these guys are quite large.

Anyway, that's all I want to share in this post. Thank you for taking your time to read and I will see you in the next post. Cya! 👋 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Porcellionides pruinosus Care Guide

Image
Porcellionides pruinosus, commonly known as powder isopods, are a species in the family Porcellionidae, and are native to Europe. These get their name from the powdery texture of their carapace and it is pretty visible and makes them quite unique in my opinion. This species is commonly used to be cleanup crew and feeders aswell for other reptiles, amphibians, and other invertebrates.  In the hobby, many keepers and breeders have cultivated a lot of morphs, such as oreo crumble, white out, red koi, etc. They are a pretty widespread species, both in the invertebrate hobby and in the world. This species is pretty widespread, going all the way from North America, to Southeast Asia and even in New Zealand. Photo credit: TC Insects These guys are a pretty easy species to keep. So let's dive into how I keep this species. Housing I house my P. pruinosus in a small storage container, about 25x15cm or something like that, but going larger would work aswell. Enclosure is pretty self explanato...
Read more

Roach Updates and Invertebrate "Spotting"

Image
 Hello. I haven't posted here in a while, so why not give some updates? First of all, here are some pretty dominant colonies still going strong. Neostylopyga rhombifolia and Periplaneta americana. So first of all, on 25/5/2025, I went to a pretty small unused patch of grass or land to see what I could find. The area around here is quite abundant in invertebrate species, and reptiles too. I found a lot of species, such as earwigs, spiders, roaches, moths, etc. But the ones that I will be mainly focusing on are a species of roach that I collected here. Lobopterella dimidiatipes L. dimidiatipes is a small, wingless species of roach that to my knowledge isn't too commonly kept around the hobby. They are a stunning species though, having some very nice looking pattern. I collected a few of these nymphs from there, and I kept them in a little cup with sphagnum and bark. Just three days later, on the 28th of May the first adult matured. As you can see above, the mature specimens have ...
Read more

Panesthia Stuff and A New Addition

Image
 Hello, welcome to another post. I apologize for my absence from posting, got some work or study to do lately. But anyway, I've got some great news with my Panesthia angustipennis. Not sure if I've ever showed them in my posts but I do have a small colony. Panesthia angustipennis angustipennis  They've actually been very easy to breed, I just keep them humid, feed them a lot of protein and food, and boom Panesthia angustipennis angustipennis nymphs I've actually had 2 batches, with the second one already in around I2 or I3. And yeah, I've found around 20 or 30 little nymphs scurrying in the substrate, although the adults are slowly dying out from old age, I'm not too concerned due to the amount of nymphs. Hopefully I can raise them well (which seems to be pretty easy so far). Moving on, I had a new addition to the collection. Armadillidium corcyraeum  A species I've been wanting to keep for a while now, and I saw them for sale on a huge discount so I thought...
Read more