Monthly Update: December 2018
I hope that everyone is having a great holiday season despite the heat, rain and other larger natural disasters nature has thrown at us this December.
With the onset of summer and the busy holiday season, many live goods sellers- including myself have closed up shop on live goods for the remainder of the year. With good reason to! It's hot and the post is too chaotic to be reliably and safely ship our critters.
Despite that, I've found it to be a good time to focus on other things in the invertebrate room and the website. I've been busy adding new tanks, enclosures, growing cultures and colonies, and writing up care sheets to go along with anything I offer. A lot has happened and is continuing to happen!
In regards to the invertebrate room, three new shrimp tanks are now cycling. In the future I'll be looking to add Green Jade neocaridina shrimp to my collection to breed and work on, though it's not likely I will be selling them soon. The other two shrimp tanks will be dedicated to culls and a second colony of Bloody Mary shrimp that will be split from my existing colonies. The purpose of these tanks is to be able to offer budget shrimp for those not looking for high end breeding, and to bolster my Bloody Mary colony numbers. They're quite easily my favourite shrimp.
Plants are going into each tank, so expect about 21 species of aquatic/amphibious plants to be added to the stock-list later in 2019.
I tried to add new species of snail, though it was unsuccessful as they passed a week after addition.
On the more "buggy" side of things I've made good progress. I now have multiple colonies of the following (all linked to caresheets):
- Springtails
- Isopod, a. vulgare
- Isopod, p. scaber
- Flightless Fruitflies (drosophila melanogaster var. vestigial wing)
These will be available in 2019. The fruitflies will be most useful for those having a hard time getting pinhead crickets, and have difficulty with fruitflies that can fly.
Other things I'm adding to my breeding program very soon are:
False Garden Mantis (Pseudomantis albofimbriata)
Status: Adult pair molted, waiting to mate.
Mallee Grass Mantis (Archimantis Sobrina)
Status: Juvenile pair, waiting for maturation.
Archimantis sp (seeking identification, likely latistyla.)
Status: Acquiring nymphs as future breeding stock.
Here are a bunch of mantis enclosures for larger species in progress. I'm pending on possibly laser cutting some custom doors that I've designed for these- but we'll see how it goes. It can get pricey!
With the end of the year drawing near, and my 25th birthday just days away- I look forward to a great 2019 with you all.