Today we are going to be dealing with the liiiitle guys from this post again, their higher class of living, and some newly discovered info. Without further ado, let's dive right into this thing. 😛
Since writing the initial introductory post on the species, Mezium affine, just over a year ago, my group has grown a bit (even with all my culling) and I decided they should be moved to a larger, permanent enclosure. The enclosure of choosing was a 128 oz. container with a plentiful amount of pinholes around the rim for ventilation. The substrate consisted of an approximately half inch layer of partially-crushed dog food and a layer of oatmeal of about the same depth on top of that. For hides I dropped in a few halfed paper towel rolls. Now this lead to surely the most important discovery I made on these guys - they can climb...….at least some surfaces!!! This info was unknown to me since I hadn't heard that they could climb and mine hadn't ever gotten up the sides of their enclosures in the previous months that I had them. I think they didn't like the new hides much or the colony move overall. I highly speculate that they don't do the kind of climbing that roachers and such are used to where the animal's feet can literally stick to the enclosure walls, but rather just take advantage of the microscopic imperfections that seemingly smooth plastic is bound to have. I tested their abilities on two different and completely clean containers and they were able to ever so slowly scale each and seemed to scrape the walls looking for footholds before proceeding higher, which even more supported my suspicions that they don't possess true climbing abilities.
After the revelation that they can indeed get up enclosure walls (however they may do it), I switched them to an identical setup except that I exchanged the pinholes on the sides of the enclosure for pinholes on the lid and the halfed paper towel rolls for an eggcrate. Since they lack the ability to actually climb upside down onto the lid, they are now completely secure. 😊
Since setting them up in their new enclosure, I have been able to get a great firsthand look at their strong preference for dog food over oatmeal; the layer of partially crushed dog food has been decimated into frass and pupal chambers while the oatmeal looks untouched in comparison. I think I'll definitely be going with exclusively dog food in the future for these guys as well as possibly leaving it uncrushed as they seem to love burring into it, filling it with pupal chambers, and eating their way out! Some freeloading adults also seem to take advantage of pre-formed cavities in the kibbles and just hang out and chow down inside. 😅 Additionally, since looking into things better, I have realized that M.affine is not the explosive breeder that I had once thought (at least at average temps). The mega colonies that I had based my thoughts off of were actually formed over multiple years and without any culling at all. Nonetheless, they are no doubt somewhat prolific animals and could still make for at least occasional micro-feeders. 🙂
Here are some pics of both their new residence and the current state of my colony.
 |
| New M.affine enclosure |
 |
Most of my current population of adult M.affine
|
Considering the new facets of the species that I have uncovered, I will almost surely go and update my previous post on them with said fresh info since I definitely don't want to be passing along false info on any of my posts. Besides that, there's not much left to say for this post except that I hope you guys all enjoyed and I'll see ya next time, goodbye!
No comments:
Post a Comment