Spiky Treasures of the Canary Islands

Hello and welcome. 🙂

I have fallen in love with micro-arthropods ever since I started keeping things like Mezium affine and Rhyscotus texensis. If they have neat body structures/colors, I could care less about the size and, if anything, it allows you to keep that many more of them! Let me speak to you a tale of how I gained one of my most prized minute species to date.

We must go back weeks and weeks in the time machine once again to meet the moment when I was having a specific chat with someone who will be downright famous over here because of how much he will show up, Anthony Molnar.  We were discussing how a dazzling isopod species I had my eye on had unexplainably crashed for him. No one is quite sure why this ever happened, but he didn't lose every individual. Some time later, his colony thankfully recovered and before I knew it, he had some available. As you can imagine, I locked in a group without hesitation. 😁 Soon enough, I got my box and opened it to find 7 out of the 8 Porcellio sp. "Spiky - Canary" had arrived in perfect shape! Let me talk to you more about these tiny knights in spiky armor.

Porcellio sp. "Spiky - Canary" is an isopod that has yet to be identified down to species-level and comes from the Canary Islands. It has some of the most pronounced texturization of any species in the hobby and so Canarian Spiky Isopod might be a fitting label if common names mean anything to you. Of course, if there's another highly-textured species from the same location, this would be moot. LOL These guys are on the smaller side of the scale for isopods topping out at about 2/3 the size of Porcellio scaber. They begin life white and eventually transition to a slate grey color with purple and/or brown hues showing up in between.

I have my thriving colony set up in a 16 oz. container at the moment with 20 large pinholes poked in the lid for ventilation. The substrate is a mix of compost soil, topsoil, perlite, and cypress mulch, which I keep moderately moist and at around an inch and a half in depth. Besides that, there's a piece of bark in there for hiding, some dead leaves for hiding/consuming, and a baby carrot and piece of cuttlebone for munching on.

Spikier than they are large!

Mixed-size individuals

Enclosure

I hope you all enjoyed and exit with a greater appreciation of the world that extends even deeper than just microfauna and the propensity to squint that much harder at some lil arthropods even just in your neighborhood. That'll be it for now and I'll meet you right where I always do - next post. 🙂

Spider Beetles Expand

What's up guys. 🙂

     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!  

It's a Spider, It's a Beetle, It's a Spider Beetle!

Hey!
A couple years back I remember scrolling through the YouTube channel of Bugsincyberspace.com when my curiosity was taken swiftly at the glimpse of an obscure and particularly peculiar beetle. My mind was blown when a culture of these outlandish organisms was noted to have been kept alive for three decades on dog biscuits in a glass jar. The sheer oddness of this beetle and the fact that I had only seen it once in that old video pretty much ensured that I would never be able to get my hands on them. Visions of this species still drifted in my mind for days and months and then one day as I was scrolling through Beetleforum.com , I stumbled upon that glorious needle in the haystack. A member of the forum by the name of cfreidsma had gotten a few individuals from bugsincyberspace and was secretly breeding them for a couple years!
Upon noticing this, I knew the species had to be mine, so we agreed to a trade and last week I finally received the beetle of my dreams and IMO one of the coolest "pests" out there, Mezium affine! 😃 This species, sometimes called the "Hooded spider beetle", strongly resemble a large mite or small spider (as the name suggests). After doing my homework on them, I also discovered that they are actually a household pest consuming grain-based foods, dead arthropods, animal skins, animal feces, feathers, hair, and old or decaying wood, a diet that you would not expect for such a unique, little beetle. Quite needless to say, I will be making sure that none of these guys escape (although this would be very unlikely anyway considering that they lack both agility and the ability to climb smooth surfaces). 
I set the majority of my 200+ individuals up in a 64 oz. container with some ventilation holes in the lid, but also housed some in a smaller, ventilated deli-cup. I provided both populations with a food/substrate of oatmeal (that they were shipped with) and dog food (which was recommended by cfreidsma for pupation, but shouldn't actually affect this since they actually just spin their own pupal chambers out of a silk) with a couple pieces of egg-crate as hides.
Pics Below! 😊

M.affine

Main M.affine enclosure

In whole, I'm very pleased to have, at last, acquired this elusive and one of a kind beetle! Although I received so many that I'll be selling off most to gain ammo for a huge, upcoming trade (and personal interests), I'll still be keeping a nice amount of both populations as I definitely wouldn't want to have these ever slip out of my collection.
I hope all of you enjoyed the presentation of my little pseudospiders and I'll meet you again at my next post, goodbye! 🙂

***UPDATE***

I just have some corrections to make to this post based on newly discovered info! First off, about 98% of what they were shipped in was actually frass, not oatmeal. LOL Secondly, I've realized that these do actually have an ability to make it up the sides of containers. Unlike some roaches and other things that can physically stick their feet to the sides of the enclosure, I highly suspect that these simply take advantage of microscopic imperfections that 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, but seemed to scrape the walls looking for footholds before proceeding higher, which even more supports my suspicions that they don't possess true climbing abilities. Anyway, I just wanted to clear that up. Thanks!