Why is he does this?

charx53

Tenebrio
Wow, ignore the post title and let us pretend it says "why is he doing this?"

Anyways..He is just hanging out at the top of the container. Is there a reason for this?



 
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I think he's fine. Larvae will travel around their containers and randomly rest wherever they happen to be. Sometimes I'll have a larvae just crawling around on the surface for a while before digging back under. Not sure if it's the lighting, but that one is looking rather yellow and may be getting ready to pupate.

 
That's one yellow larva! Looks so close to pupating. I do not have an answer to why it is so high up in the substrate. Usually all of mine pupate mid, or bottom of the container.

 
My guess is that, for whatever reason, he could not find a suitable place to make a pupal cell in his enclosure, and is probably going to pupate right there at the top of the substrate. I would flatten out and smooth the top of the substrate, make a indentation in the center like a pupal cell and put it in there, and see what happens. (Disclaimer, I've never kept these types of beetles so this may be horrible advice, this is what I do for certain Tenebrionids that attempt to pupate on the surface though)

 
It may be that your substrate is too loose or too shallow for the larva to construct a pupal chamber. You could take out the larva and compact the lower half of the substrate, then put back the larva and cover it with substrate all the way to the top, make sure not to compact the top half or you might end up squishing your larva.

 
That title made me do a real "lol". Thank you for that!

Anyway, good luck with your larvae.
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