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EDIT, Nov 2019: In light of new information, this species is NOT Hormetica apolinari, but Hormetica strumosa. A little less-showy than their relatives, Lucihormetica, these are a new addition to the hobby. What they lack in glowspots they make up for in size, robustness, the presence of prominent horns in males, and behavior. They are also quite prolific. Hands down one of the most rewarding species to keep.

MasterTherea said: Must...have...fish flakes...so...tired...of...leaves... #gimmeprotein

I caught these two in the process of making more roaches. Pretty neat to see, since the females only mate the once. Also found this little lady. At least, I'm guessing it's a lady based on the antennae. She's awful small, should really be at least a quarter inch longer and wider, and clearly her wings aren't right. I'm guessing they didn't expand properly. One wing is about the right shape and size, and then there's that other one, that I hope doesn't give her any trouble. She seems healthy enough otherwise, she's moving normally. Hopefully she's fertile. What causes this? Is she likely to just be a particularly small roach, or did something go wrong? They've had plenty of leaves and some occasional cat food and apple, and the others (a dozen or so) that I've had mature have all been fine.

Why on earth? They aren't even in the same genus, much less the same species! Has anyone else seen that ?

I just got 4 of these a few days ago, I really want to breed them! The first thing I wanted to ask is how to sex the nymphs, I tried looking at the abdomen segments underneath like with my hisser nymphs but I can't tell 😕 I have one that's a lot bigger than the others, will keeping it at room temperature (70 F) and the other ones warmer let the smaller ones catch up to it in size? It looks like a subadult but I wasn't sure. Thanks for any help!

Wowza! This meeting was an awesome one! We got to see and exchange a lot of cool specimens, and in the conversation that inevitably comes when you put a bunch of invertebrate lovers together, the topic questions I had prepared sort of got lost, ha ha! Thanks to all who came out! I'll see you at the next meeting. Thanks, Arthroverts

You can check the gender on older nymphs with the segments, but if these are pretty small it may not be obvious. Do they all look like males or all females? The female nymphs grow a lot larger than the male nymphs due to the difference in the adult size.

Mine is @invertebratedude, don't post there very often, but I am finding myself on there more and more lately...

Instagram is so much fun, Joshua. Love it! Mine is @bugsincyberspace https://www.instagram.com/bugsincyberspace/

Just make sure you don't use buffalo or dermestid beetles, they eat the roaches in quantity when their populations explode.

IT WORKS! Thanks for the heads up, @Hisserdude

I guess I should update this thread. After some discussions with @Hisserdude, and in light of a new scientific paper, it appears that this species is NOT Hormetica apolinari, but Hormetica strumosa. I am not afraid to admit when I am wrong when there is enough evidence so I will change all me labels from now on, and you should do the same. Unfortunately I cannot edit the thread's title.. but I will put a notice in the opening post.

Plants can survive with roaches in the short to medium term, provided you keep your roaches well fed at all times. I have kept ficus quercifolia with some rainforest species for a year, but the Vivarium eventually got taken over by hissers and they dug it up and chewed the fresh shoot tips. Cheers from Bill.

Heck yeah, Tenebs are way cooler than scarabs IMO, they are my second favorite group of inverts, (first being roaches obviously). Love documenting their life cycles and breeding obscure species!

What kind of info are you looking for? If you're looking for something that adds to your background knowledge of roaches it's great. It contains a lot of interesting facts about cockroaches but it is a discussion of biology tidbits (not husbandry related) often about species you may never see.

A lot of people have been asking me about the species of Panchlora in culture, and why I price the white roaches differently than the others. More specifically, people wanted to know about their size difference. I took a photo to show you the sizes of Panchlora "white" and P. "speckled", compared to P. nivea. Please note that my P. nivea come from a wild population, so they might not be P. nivea at all, but their size is identical to P. nivea that is in culture. These are all unmated females. P. "speckled" is slightly bigger than P. nivea, and Panchlora "white" is even bigger. You can also see the color difference between the species, but I'll note that the light conditions for photographing them were not ideal. Panchlora are known to be very reflective. Besides the body color, you can also see differences in the color of their antennae.

Managed to take some better pictures, couldn't withhold these...

Another point of view on a male:

Looks like most of my nymphs are subadults or pre-subs, so I'll have lots of adults soon! Here are some pctures I took today of my adult female and one of her nearly mature offspring:

I ordered 280+ res runners off of ebay and when I got them Infound them all crammed into a 32 oz deli cup. I put them im their steuo and I noticed that some of them had died. I was told that the heat lamp that I kept them under probably was frying them, so I removed them from the heat lamp. In the next couple hours I found another 20+ dead. I moved them into another enclosure. Another 20-30+ dead. I raised the humidity but still, more dead. They would always be on their backs and try to right themselves but they never could get back up, and they always acted really sluggsih when I righted them. Even worse, when I did flip them over they would sometiems stick out their hind legs to the sides like an airplane and just slowly drag themselves around with their antennae idragging along too. What is going on? I went from around 300 to about 80 in less than 2 days and I’ really hpset and concerned; is it possible that it was pesticides? I fed some to all my pets and I really don’t want anything bad to gappen to them. I currently have them in a tupperware bin with moist peat/coco fiber to keep humidity high.

Are these gone from the US hobby?

Bump, someone please help, I’m down to 50 right now, they just keep falling over and can’t seem to get back up. I don’t see any twitching or signs of pesticides at all