Live plants in eleodes enclosures?

Bugboy3092

Strategus
not totally sure what this topic would go in, but I figured it’s probably best here. Anyways, has anyone tried using live plants as an alternate food source for eleodes adults and larvae? I’ve read that many species report as being pests on roots in crop fields, but I’ve never actually read anything about anyone using live plants (grown in the enclosure itself) as a food source for them. Does anyone have any experience in this? It seems reasonable that giving the larvae access to live roots may be able to help them attain a greater size (I’ve heard it’s hard to grow larvae to wild caught beetle size) in captivity, as in some parts live roots would be the only food they can access for most of the year (white sands New Mexico for instance, beetles are common in patches where live plants grow). Could it even act as a stimulus for egg laying, like in strategus (I’m not using grass here, but it’s the same basic concept)? I just used one of those birdseed mixes by Audubon society for this, but hopefully there’ll be some positive results from it.

 
I volunteer at a local insectarium, and the Eleodes beetles would not breed until live plants were added. Amusingly, the museum now has more than they know what to do with. 

 
I've bred several Eleodes species, never had any sort of live plants in with them... It's possible SOME species might need them to breed, or simply may develop better with them in their setup, but the vast majority of Eleodes (at least the species that have entered captivity thus far), have bred perfectly fine without any live plants in their enclosures. Now I wouldn't be surprised if some Tenebs that ate mainly live plant matter as adults like Edrotes needed live plants in their setup to induce oviposition... 

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Back
Top