Hisserdude

Roachcrossing's recommendation of "dry substrate, high air humidity" makes little sense and is why I lost my sp. "Jinka" culture... Just keep them with a horizontal humidity gradient, one half of the enclosure dry, the other half humid, that's what most people successful with Deropeltis seem to do. D.paulinoi seem to be more moisture loving than other Deropeltis species. They do appreciate good airflow, and Deropeltis do not burrow, so vertical bark slabs or eggflats work best for them.

Any pictures of these hybrids?

I just used a dollar store seive/sifter for mine, got it down to a fine enough level for the nymphs. Some people say it doesn't matter, but I suspect those people have a deep substrate in their enclosures, and while the top inch or so may be quite chunky, the bottom layers of substrate are always where the fine material settles down to, and where the small nymphs will stay. My problem was I used quite a chunky mix of not only coconut fiber, but also Zilla "Jungle Mix", and only gave them a couple inches of substrate, so there wasn't enough fine substrate for the smaller nymphs to burrow into.

I'd think hybrid offspring between the two genera would look pretty weird and it'd be easy to tell if they did so... You're probably safe to keep them together TBH, but I personally wouldn't risk it.

OK, that's good to know, I think nowadays in Europe some people must label the "Big" stock as just P.vanwaerbeki with no strain name at all, which probably accounts for Nicolas's experience with the lack of differences between them. Color wise, and considering the fact that this particular stock is very finicky compared to other hissers in terms of productivity and young nymph survival rates, what I have should be pure "Big" stock then, (though for some reason they've not been marketed as being from the "Big" strain). Your old "Big" stock was almost certainly pure too if they were finicky as well, that seems to be one of the dead giveaways that Princisia are pure, (even the recently imported "Androhamana" Princisia are similarly difficult), too bad yours fizzled out, most people in the US had the same happen to their pure cultures.

Yeah, weird camera angle I guess, molted twice since then and is now (I think) a subadult. According to my lineage tracing, these are (supposedly) untainted descendants from DoubleD's Princisia, which were apparently NOT labeled as "Big" at the time, (he may or may not have been selling stock labeled "Big" at the same time, but these supposedly did not come from that culture). So I've just been calling them "Standard", though they're probably the same as what pure "Big" used to be, (and according to @Nicolas Rousseaux, the whole "Big" labeling was for marketing and to get more people to buy them, the size and percentage of large adults is the same between stocks labeled "Big" and "Normal/Standard"). Interesting to hear about the "portentosa" looking and black vanwaerbeki strains, seems both have been lost from culture for a while, (at least in their pure forms).

As a general rule of thumb, using the coloration of nymphs that are not yet subadults or larger is an inconsistent way of determining purity... I believe you mentioned something similar in your book "For the Love of Cockroaches", about telling younger Gromphadorhina oblongonata nymphs apart from other Gromphadorhina species, or telling if they're pure. They're still nymphs in that picture, that same solid black one (though it actually had small white spots on the thorax, hard to see with the flash), has now molted to the subadult stage:

They're pretty much the same as Gromphadorhina in terms of husbandry TBH, not much different there. As for potential hybridizing, a year ago I'd have said it was impossible, but now that we know that Aeluropoda and Gromphadorhina can hybridize, all bets are off IMO... I'd recommend keeping breeding groups of ANY hisser species separate.

Here on the forums, on facebook, heck I've even had luck using Craigslist. 😂

Sell em in bulk for cheap as feeder use. That's what I do to cull overpopulated colonies.

First off, unfortunately based on the size compared to the male, that individual looks like a nymph, and at the slow rate these things grow, might still be a few months until it matures, (at which point the male will be dead). Medium/large Arenivaga nymphs are fairly easy to sex from above, males develop larger, more curved thoracic segments than the females do, as they're going to have wings eventually: In some species this is more obvious than others, and it only works on medium to large nymphs, younger ones look much the same as each other. Alternatively you can sex them from below by looking at the last ventral segments, females have one big one, males have two smaller ones, here's a pair of A.bolliana nymphs: Secondly, you'll want them on several inches of coconut fiber, with only an inch or so of leaf litter on top at the most, they have small appetites and don't eat all that much, and appreciate a decent amount of fine substrate to burrow into, sounds like you've got yours set up the opposite of that with a very thin layer of actual substrate and a whole bunch of leaves... 😅 Small containers are actually preferable for this genus though. Thirdly, I don't know if these are A.erratica or not, there are many, many similar looking species, and with the exception of very distinctive, unmistakable ones, (which these are not), the proper practice is to label them Arenivaga sp. "insert locality here", until we can get a taxonomist who specializes in this genus to take a look at them and give us an ID. The locality information is pretty important when getting an ID, usually we use city or at least county names. Hope this helps! In short, I'd go out looking for more females/nymphs if I were you, even if yours is a female nymph you're gonna need male nymphs to get her mated. Try checking animal burrows, they really love hiding in those.

Thanks, glad you find it useful!

No problem!

The blondes are a true breeding color morph of the normal duckies... I haven't heard of normal duckies popping up in blonde colonies, but I have seen lots of "half blonde" individuals show up in normal ducky colonies, which could probably be line bred into normal blondes.

Bug burger is probably a bit more nutritional than just oats, but either could work for hissers. Jelly cups are not a complete diet for roaches, but can be offered instead of fruits from time to time, (actually fruits would probably be best though).