Brr! The chill of winter has hit Melbourne again and our heaters are set to keep our cultures and colonies active throughout. This means we’re already halfway through 2020. It feels like yesterday many of us were hoping for a great year in January. What a roller coaster the entirety of it has been so far…

Covid-19 Updates

This section has now become a customary part of our update, a testament to the long term impact the virus is having on society. We’re in a precarious place in Victoria right now, so we are continuing to operate as if we are living under full restrictions for the safety of our family, customers and community. We’ll continue shipping out on Mondays only to avoid weekend holdovers caused by any further delays. A new change in our operations will be using Parcel Pickup instead of lodging our orders in person at the post office, where we often have to go wait in line at a shopping centre. This will lessen the points of contact in the local area. 

International shipping outside of Australia is still being heavily impacted. Any international customers with concerns about this are welcome to contact us for more details about shipping to their country. While our Shopify hosted website doesn’t have the tools to support more comprehensive information, our Etsy Shop has more shipping information for international customers. 

New Videos and Photos

It’s been three months since our last shrimp colony updates, and new June 2020 photos and videos of our shrimp colonies have been put up! Below is a summary video with all our colonies, but we do have longer videos in our colony showcase playlist [LINK PLAYLIST]. These new photos and videos have replaced the old ones on the shrimp listed on our website. 

New Products

We have a selection of limited products that we obtained from a friend. These particular shrimp room goods are difficult to find in Australia, and are limited in number. Some of these we have used to kick-start immature shrimp tanks and feed our shrimp a bit more variety- they’re quite proven products internationally and in our shrimp room. It’s a shame that they’re quite difficult to get here. 

Click on the photos to get to the product pages. 

Scorpions

We have some individual scorpions up on our store whilst stock lasts. A fair number of scorpions were rehomed to us, and some of them will need to be moved onto new homes. Along with these scorpions, we have some young Rainforest Scorpions that are still with their mother. Once they are older, they will eventually make their way onto the store.

Charm in Progress

We were hoping that our betta charms would be ready this month, some of them are- but we’re still waiting on parts to arrive. With delivery delays still happening, things are arriving much later than even the delayed estimates. Despite that, we were able to put together a small amount of the charms. It will be some time before we have enough to put up on our online and Etsy store, but here’s a preview of what’s coming!

A little note on Red Bee Charms: They’ve been out of stock for a while now, we know people want them! We’re still waiting on one set of pieces to arrive to make them available. 

Changes to Articles

Over the past year I’ve made observations through culturing different feeder invertebrates and working with fermentation and learnt things over time. With better understanding and confidence of my discoveries, I’ve made changes to the following articles on our website to improve them:

Fruit Fly Care Sheet

• Some language and sentences were simplified for ease of reading. 
• Notes on temperature needs and avoiding mold have been adjusted. 

Fruitfly Recipe

• Change in the method of the recipe has been made to encourage fermentation and discourage mold. 
• Notes on temperature needs and avoiding mold have been adjusted.
  Ingredients remain the same. 

Raising fruit flies has been a learning experience since we first picked up the challenge of making them more publicly available in 2018. I hope that these observations and changes to our guides helps people keep established colonies long term! 

I’ll look at writing more articles for recipes that don’t use oats and maintaining ideal heat for best results at home in the future. An updated video of Fruit Fly Care is much needed now, that brings us to our next topic...

Progress on videos

Things are coming along and filming of our Nitrogen Cycle series will start in June! It took a lot of preparation this month to get the set and supplies together for the three part video series. As soon as that is done, I’m likely to make an updated version of Fruit Fly Care to replace the old video. I’m hoping to learn, improve and find faster ways to make quality educational videos along the way.

That’s all for June!

Thanks for reading up to this point! Aside from the main points, substrate changing in the shrimp room continues, as does all the work needed to keep our animals healthy. A lot has been done, but there is ever always more to do. I’m certainly enjoying the constant busy work. 

In the meantime, stay safe and healthy!