>>Cool, these are from the animals you lost in the heat, correct?
One and the same. I had one mating back in March, with 31 eggs resulting. I decided I would experiment, so I incubated this batch in moist sand. BAD idea. The sand dried out too fast. I ended up losing 13 eggs right off the bat.
>>6 months to hatch, that's pretty quick. Did you incubate them in the mid 80's? I incubate mine in the closet - it varies from high 60's to low 80's, and it takes usually 7-8 months. Some people incubate them in the mid to high 80's, and they hatch 1-2 months earlier, but are smaller. I actually had much higher hatch rates and lower mortality when I incubate them in the easiest, most half-a$$ed manner - I put them in slightly moist vermiculite, seal them in a plastic box, put them in the closet, an dcheck every few days. When I tried with a temp controlled incubator, I had weaker babies, and more runts. Some find that incubators work best for them. My animal room closet stays juuuust right.
That's exactly what I did. I put the eggs in a tupperware container, then put that in my bug closet. It's really the coolest part of my house. We've been keeping the AC set to 80, so that's what the eggs were exposed to, a constant 80.
>>I'm glad these guys are hatching out for you. I've found hydei flies work best - they aren't nearly as prolific as meanogaster, but if you've got several large cultures going, they can't be beat. I ordered mine from Flyculture.com. I find that his cultures are bigger, and last much logner than any others I've had. I had a culture of melanogaster and one of Hydei when my veields started to hatch. I overwatered the eggs in one container, so almost all the babies hatche dearly and died. I had the cultures for several weeks until anythying was able to eat them. Still, the cultures lasted me nearly two months of constant feeding. The big 32 oz. cultures are great, at $8 a piece.
I was gonna order up some fruit flies, but I don't think I have time to do so now. I'll have to deal with pinheads, though I don't really like them.
The babies seem to be doing okay. A little dehydrated and hungry, but other than that they're doing okay. Bernie is at home, so she's gonna go get some pinheads from Petco until our order comes in. She's going to put them out to get them started on some good Arizona fall sunshine. It's only been getting about 95 lately, but I think this might be a bit too warm for the lil guys. I'll bring them in during the hottest time of the day.
OH, on a related note, my panthers seem to be doing well, even when the temp spikes to 95. It doesn't stay that hot all day, it just spikes to that for a couple of hours. We CONSTANTLY water them at this temp, just to be on the safe side.
BTW- Anyone in Phoenix with some good Hydei cultures going that could help me out with a culture or two? You'd be doing me and the baby veileds a HUGE favor!!!!
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Victor Gomez
gomezvi@yahoo.com