kellakk

You may be looking in the wrong places... In OC I see clusters of scorpion burrows (Anuroctonus pococki) literally everywhere. Sometimes they're so dense, there will be 5 per square meter. Bothriocyrtum californicum (trapdoor spider) is almost as common, but more difficult to spot at a glance.

There are scorpions practically everywhere, trapdoor spiders, tarantulas, many species of darkling beetle, native roaches, leaf beetles, and even stick insects if you go up into the mountains. If you want scarabs, Cotinis is common and fun to breed.

Now that's the wrong attitude to have! I know it seems like there's nothing in urban-suburban southern California, but if you look in the right places you'll find plenty. The trick is to be patient and spend a lot of time in a few good places; there are many times when I've thought a bug hunt would turn up nothing, but then I get lucky and find something under the last rock I flip. When you say woodlands here are devoid of life, you're flat out wrong. There are countless critters living in the leaf litter, under bark, in or on dying trees, and even in the living trees. Like I said,just don't be discouraged and just spend more time out there.

I've been feeding them with cuttings. With one, a live plant would be ok but they're just about as destructive as a phasmid so too many would strip the plant.

No, it's definitely milkweed that they're eating. There's a bunch of Asclepias fascicularis in my area and the beetles love eating it. I don't currently have pics, but I'll take some and show them soon. Thanks for the reply though.

I found a group of these beautiful beetles on milkweed while I was out hunting. Has anyone had experience rearing them? I've so far fed them only on milkweed (which they absolutely destroy), but can they be reared on other plants?

Awesome! That's one hurdle passed, next one is to get breeding adults.

Yeah, I've given them various forms of fungi to experiment. They liked white mushrooms, and seem to be eating the fungi that I collected in their habitat.

Thanks for the advice, I'll put some in there.

It's actually a piece of dog food that I let fungus grow on, in the hopes that they'd eat it. No luck, apparently.

I just realised this now, but if you look at the second picture there's an insect crawling on the beetle's back! I wonder what it is, I'll have look for it when I get home.

I found these two species together in oak woodland, and set up a place for them to (hopefully) breed. Well, there you go! They're a little out of focus, I know. I wish I had a macro lens.

Hopefully, I have a list but the hard part is getting to the right places at the right times. That's really interesting, I didn't know pet insects were popular in South Korea. I knew they were popular in Japan, and crickets are common in China and Vietnam, but I wish they were more popular here.

Awesome! I've been looking for diving beetles for a while, hopefully I find some come spring. I didn't know these were popular in South Korea, are they pretty successful with breeding?

Has anyone kept and bred this species? It's pretty common here in SoCal so I'm sure someone has, but I didn't find anything when I searched for it in the forum. I've actually tried to keep one before with my other Eleodes, but it died. It looked like it dried out, which leads me to believe they need more humidity than Eleodes acuticaudus. Don't know if that's true, though.