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Baby rhino roaches! (AGAIN!)


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At about 3am last night I was checking on my tanks before I went to sleep ... and then sleep was not had until about 5am because MY RHINO ROACHES ARE HAVING BABIES.

I saw two little nymphs scurrying around, and there are probably more. I didn't want to disturb them too much, so I put the lid back on and then went screaming down the hall. :D

I will need to bother them at some point to do some renovations. There's too much substrate in there right now for little nymphs, and I'm debating whether or not to remove the male. I plan to keep the nymphs with the mother for a few months, but have heard conflicting reports on whether or not the male may try to eat the nymphs. Has anyone had experience with this?

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That's great - ANY breeding of this species in captivity is significant.  The first examples I ever saw of them were at the Australian Museum, in 1996.  Since then, it's great to see that they've become more established in the hobby.  I've never kept any roaches myself, but if I ever do, Macropanesthia rhinoceros would definitely be the one to have!  Very unusual roach, and the world's heaviest.

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  • 2 weeks later...

An update! The babies are doing really well, mama roach has been hauling every leaf she can get her little claws on into the hide and piling them all up for the babies. They are quite translucent still, so you can see that they've been eating!

Papa roach is not happy about being relocated to his own container, and he's been sulking under the cocofiber. Poor guy. :D

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5 hours ago, aspenentomology said:

It's really interesting that she moved the leaves for the babies. Is this a common trait with larger roaches or is it unique to this species?

I honestly have no idea - they're my only roaches. (Because they act more like beetles than roaches!) Before the babies, she and the male would wander around and munch on the leaves, and sometimes they'd take a couple back to the hide to stash for later ... but she's cleared the whole tank and now ALL the leaves are in the hide, LOL. I'm a little surprised she hasn't tried to haul the beetle jelly cup in there too!

 

1 hour ago, Hoolia said:

Awe, so cute! Thank you for sharing an update! I'd love to see them continue to progress.

Thanks, I'll keep posting updates occasionally!

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 6/13/2019 at 1:26 AM, arizonablue said:

they're my only roaches. (Because they act more like beetles than roaches!)

I also prefer the roaches that are more beetle-like. Many of them are burrowers (Ergaula, Lucihormetica) so I don't see them as often as I like. Your rhinos are the holy grail, I hope the young grow quick and stay healthy for you! Thanks for keeping the thread updated with reports and photos!

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  • 1 month later...
2 hours ago, PowerHobo said:

I've never had a single interest in owning cockroaches... and now here we are... 😑

Haha! I didn't either until I got these ... and I have tried keeping other roaches and just could not enjoy it. :(  They were too much like the roaches that pop out of the drains in the summer, LOL. These big guys, though, are nothing like other roaches. They're slow and clumsy and unless you're looking at their underside, they don't even look much like roaches. More like big armored beetles. The babies scoot around faster than the parents, but lack of wings makes them easy to deal with. I never have to wonder if one of the little guys is gonna take a leap at my face!

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Another little update - another molt is in progress! Here's a freshly molted nymph next to one of its siblings who is almost ready to molt too. I adore how fat and round they get immediately after molting. 

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20 hours ago, Acro said:

Gorgeous!  

Congrats on the nymphs!  You've done well (and so have Papa and Mama roaches)!

How are you keeping yours?  Can you give us some details on their setup?

Thanks! And sure, they're incredibly easy to care for. I have them in a low, long tank (not sure of exact measurements but it takes up about 25% of an average coffee table). When I had just the parents in there, I had them on about 2 inches of cocofiber substrate. Just enough so they could burrow completely but the sub wouldn't be heavy on top of them. Now that I have the nymphs, papa roach is in a smaller container and mama and babies in the tank have a *very* thin layer of cocofiber so the nymphs can molt safely. There's a plastic hide, your average low snake hide with two openings. Mama roach and her babies spend the majority of their time in there and when it was just the parents they were usually both in there as well. They tend to shove the cocofiber around and make themselves nice and cozy. That's literally the entire setup - cocofiber and a hide. They're misted daily - but I'm in the desert, a more humid location wouldn't require misting every day. For food, I offer dry oak leaves, beetle jellies, and cichlid pellets. The leaves are the main diet staple. They don't go crazy on the jelly, it seems to mostly be used as a water source. They go absolutely bonkers for the cichlid pellets and the adults will take them straight from my hand. If you just drop them in the tank, within 30 seconds a roach has trundled out and hauled it off, LOL. 

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1 hour ago, Dragozap said:

Do the males grow faster than the females? I'm planning on getting a nymphal pair myself. Also, nice going with the breeding, can't wait to see them grow up!

They seem to all be molting at approximately the same time, at least so far. And they're too small for me to reliably sex them yet. With my pair I don't believe the male grew any faster than the female. 

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  • 5 weeks later...

Some more photos of the growing little roaches! I bothered them to count babies again today - all sixteen are still happy and healthy and most of them look like they're about to molt again. I recently got a photo of one of them barely out of the old exoskeleton. Later this month I'm going to begin transferring the babies to their own container, probably a few at a time to avoid stressing out the mother with a suddenly empty nest. She's been doing such a great job of raising her little ones. :)

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  • arizonablue changed the title to Baby rhino roaches! (AGAIN!)

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