THE TRADE: A Year in the Making

HELLO! 😃

     Extra! Extra! Read all about it! We've made it to 100 posts!!! 💯💯💯 It's been such a long road getting here that it almost feels surreal typing this up right now, but it's happening! To get that out of the way for a moment though, this post is on an extremely drawn out, but extremely loaded trade that I was lucky enough to pull off with good friend, Kyle Kandilian. My end was in fact so heavy in species that I'm forced to split this into a two part series with this post being on the roaches and the next being on everything else, but don't worry, you've got a goody today. 😛 That'll do it for the intro, so ready, set, action!

     In Summer of last year, my newly-acquired Acladocricus sp. were somehow brought up in a Facebook conversation between me and Kyle. He was immediately determined to take them off my hands and even went as far as to throw Macropanesthia rhinoceros and Archispirostreptus gigas on the table at one point. Unfortunately things quickly ended up falling through with that as he went on a lengthy Facebook leave and in the time that I wasn't able to contact him, thee Acladocricus unexpectedly perished. 😞

     Skip a few months and Kyle's at least partially back on Facebook. We chat a bit and after a while we come up with some new trade material! This happened to all be going on right before the fall edition of the famed Tinley Park NARBC expo and he needed me to ship out at least one species from his end of the trade as he had planned to try selling them at the show. I ended up shipping all except one of his species at that time. He had agreed to bring his trade pieces to the show, but at the last minute he asked for a list of what exactly he was supposed to be bringing again and so I told him as soon as I could. It was the day of the expo and I hadn't received a confirmation that he had brung along my end of the trade, so I decided to head over just in case he had and also to hand off the last species he wanted in trade. Upon getting to the Tinley Park Convention Center and finding his booth, to quote a previous post, "He explained that he had gotten my message at the very last second and wasn't able to bring along his pieces of the trade, but if there was anything that I liked at the table, to let him know." Well, as you guys know, I tried to make pretty much an all out deal to acquire a pair of Rhinoceros Roaches that he had on hand and while he did decline, he also promised that he'd get me a couple sometime this year (definitely not a spoiler or anything 😛). My second trade proposal was a success and I ended up walking away with 10 Romalea microptera "Yellow" nymphs...…..but also an IOU. I only exchanged the single species that I had brought to the show for the 10 Eastern Lubbers, meaning that he still owed me the inverts for the things that I had previously shipped him. I was told that they'd be on their way to my house as soon as he got home...….things do not always go as planned.

     Weeks and weeks passed without a word from Kyle. It was only through chatting with one of his closest buddies that I learned he had encountered multiple misfortunes since returning from the expo including a car crash and a devastating flood in his basement AKA the invert room. 😕 Once again he had seemingly fallen off the face of the planet and it would be months before I was able to get ahold of him.

     Memory hits a wall when recounting stories with a timeline such as long as this, but in, I believe, Spring of this year, I miraculously received a message from the invert world's disappearing man. 😂 Of course, I immediately started pushing and pushing for what was left of my end of the trade to be shipped out, but for multiple reasons that came up, that unfortunately still wasn't an option. That may have been a good thing though as brand new trade talks soon began to burn and over the course of the next few months we had formulated a LARGE handful of new species to exchange! 😃 Come July, approximately a year after the idea of making a second ever trade came up, and the gems (as far as I'm concerned) I had waited so long for had ARRIVED. Among things that will be covered in the second part of this series, this box contained about 13 small Eurycotis improcera nymphs, 8 mixed-age Parcoblatta caudelli, 8 small Lucihormetica grossei nymphs, and drumroll please...…..a sexed pair of smaller MACROPANESTHIA RHINOCEROS nymphs!!!!!! 😆 Let's get into each species saving the best for last. 😉

     The Lucihormetica weren't technically part of the trade, but something he graciously included as a "placeholder" for another species that he owed me, but couldn't send at the time. I suppose while we're on the topic of L.grossei, this would be a sensible time to do a little update on them. Well, since I made the initial post announcing that I had acquired the species, I'm very happy to report that both of my founding nymphs have matured and the female has given birth twice! The male matured only a couple months after I received it, while the female matured in Spring of this year; both look absolutely dazzling. 🙂 The girl is a tad wider and longer than the male, but he is still far from a shabby roach with his beautiful pronotal spots and long wings (for a Lucihormetica species). I was only able to get good individual pics of the male way back at the beginning of this year, but his appearance has barely changed since then and so I'll go ahead and include them. My first group of babies were born in mid-June and the exact litter-count was 12. Within the last week or so, my girl awesomely had her second litter as tiny, olive-colored nymphs were visible indicating that they were very recently born - possibly even within the day that they were discovered!

Mega Glowspot pics on the double!

Adult male L.grossei

Adult female L.grossei

Adult L.grossei pair

Freshly-born L.grossei nymphs

Small L.grossei nymphs

Mixed L.grossei nymphs that my female produced/from Kyle

     Parcoblatta caudelli is one of the larger of the wood roaches and to my understanding, one of the hardest to find both in the wild and in the hobby (although virtually no wood roach is very readily available). It shows off a caramel-colored body for the duration of it's life and quite oddly macropterous females are the norm for this species unlike other Parcoblatta. When I initially received them I had 8 total; about 5 large nymphs, maybe two adult females, and one adult male. Either way, now I have exactly 5 large nymphs; I did have an adult female left as well until I unfortunately just found her dead about an hour ago. I think I'll include some pics of her anyway. I haven't seen many othecae around at all, so hopefully the adult females just hid them well. I'm keeping my group in a 20 qt. container with two 1.5" ventilation holes on one end and one on the other. The substrate is a moist mix of coconut fiber, coconut husk, cypress mulch, dead leaves, and sphagnum moss, which is about 1 inch in depth. The hides consist of a couple pieces of bark and a couple cup-holders on top of that.

Parcoblatta royalty and their domain down below. 😛

Large P.caudelli nymphs

Adult female P.caudelli

P.caudelli enclosure

     Eurycotis improcera, the newest skunk roach to make its way to the U.S hobby is a species I've drooled over ever since I saw the first specimens online. They were collected by primarily mantis enthusiast, Brian Fridie, in Puerto Rico in early 2016 and entered captive culture soon afterwards. This species is about the same size as E.decipiens, maybe a sliver smaller, and looks very similar to E.opaca "Jaruco" as nymphs, but transforms to a very unique-looking roach at adulthood with an elegant mix of ivory, black, and tan coloration. Curiously, they have a definite need for fruit as first instar nymphs and will only start feeding on dog food and other normal roach foods once they molt to second instar. Besides that, they have been found to be the most dryness-tolerant of the Eurycotis species being bred in the U.S, which makes husbandry that much more laid back. I initially received approximately 13 nymphs, but after doing a thorough count it seems that I only have 8-9 nymphs. I'm very much hoping that the missing nymphs died from anything besides a harmful fungus (which will be detailed more in upcoming posts) as one has been going around.....guess I'll find out soon enough. I'm keeping my little guys in conditions identical to my Parcoblatta caudelli except that I'm trying to keep the feeding area a bit dryer than the rest of the enclosure and so I have more ventilation on the front of the enclosure than the back. Since the set-ups are so similar, I think I'll skip the enclosure pics for these guys.

Skunk Roach goodness can be found right here!

Small E.improcera nymphs

Medium-sized E.improcera nymph

     Last but if anything not least, Macropanesthia rhinoceros. 😄 Just as Kyle promised last year at Tinley Park NARBC, he got me a pair of nymphs, but not only that, they were his last pair of 2017's nymphs, which means I have to wait that much less time for them to reach adulthood! This Australian goliath of a roach is widely known as the holy grail of the U.S  cockroach hobby. Referred to most commonly as the Rhinoceros Roach, this species gets its name from the shovel-like look that the male develops on the end of his pronotum at adulthood. There are very few roaches longer than it in captive culture and there are none that can surpass its weight. Nymphs start out a hay-yellow and eventually develop a wholesome red color fittingly similar to the armor of the comic book character, Juggernaut. Besides it's physical appearance, it is highly sought after due to it's very slow growth and reproduction, which ensures that its rarity is always sustained. To top this all off, it can even hiss similar to the famed hissing cockroaches.........truly a stupidly awesome roach. My boy came in with a dwarf back leg indicating that it was previously lost, however it has grown a bit since his recent molt. The female is the opposite, she came in perfect, but has since acquired a minor pronotum deformity since molting. I'm currently keeping my aforementioned male and female in a 6 qt. container with 6 1/3" ventilation holes on one end and none on the other. The substrate is around an inch of coconut fiber, which I'm keeping moist on the non-ventilated side and only slightly moist on the ventilated side. Other than that, I provide them with dead leaves, which they go through surprisingly fast. 

Feast your eyes on the beasts from down under. 😛

Smaller M.rhinoceros female nymph

Smaller M.rhinoceros male nymph

Smaller M.rhinoceros nymph pair

M.rhinoceros enclosure

     The time from my first blog post to my 50th was approximately 6 months and from there to where we are today took just short of two years, which means I've been posting 4 times slower than I used to. 😬 I'm very grateful that you guys have stuck around with me through this particularly rough patch. Although I don't think I'll ever be posting quite as much as I did at the start of this blog, I'm putting much more effort and info into each post than I used to, so hopefully that's an acceptable trade off. 😛 That should chalk things up for this post here and I'll see you at part two of this series, goodbye!