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Finally have a male lat...how much longer now?

syzygy

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Texas
Three months ago I received about 25 freebie lat nymph and I decided to try and raise them to start a feeder colony. They have gotten much bigger and I've just noticed that I have a confirmed male. I assume at this point he is sexually mature? I read that the the ooths take anywhere from 1-4 months to hatch, but I've not found any info about how long it could take before the mated females start producing them.
 

kormath

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depends how active the male is ;) last time i had to wait for a male to mature it was within a week or so that the females started dropping ooths if i remember right.
 

syzygy

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Texas
Fantastic. I was worried I'd have to wait a couple months for that and then the 1-4 months for them to hatch.
So far this experiment is working out great. My fish food always expires before I can use it all and I was just about to throw out a few containers when I started this project. These things love fish food!
 

kormath

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Fantastic. I was worried I'd have to wait a couple months for that and then the 1-4 months for them to hatch.
So far this experiment is working out great. My fish food always expires before I can use it all and I was just about to throw out a few containers when I started this project. These things love fish food!
yes they do :) I use a variety with mine. I'll feed them once with ground dog food, when that's gone i'll give them fish food, when that's gone i'll use the Fluker's Orange cubes, and after that some Dubia chow i got with an order of those. I always add a carrot or 2 or some other veggies with the dry food though, it's not needed with the flukers orange cubes.
 

syzygy

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I have an ooth! Actually I could have more...I need to lift up their egg crate and see. I only noticed this one because it was in their water crystal dish.
I was imagining I'd separate them off at first just to get a feel for how many they lay each week and how long it takes from them to hatch. Mostly just satisfying my own curiosity...once I understand those things I was imagining I'd just leave them in with the adults. Sound reasonable?
 

kormath

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works for me. i pull them off the egg crates, they need moisture to hatch. All the ones i've left in the egg crates never hatched.
 

syzygy

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Texas
My first ooth hatched! I now have at least 50 or 60 more to hatch. I have 12 adult females and 8 males and it seems like I'm getting a dozen ooths per week (so 1 per female roughly). If all of these hatch it will be way more than my 13 T's can keep up with. Guess I can donate them to my local pet store to use for feeding theirs...maybe earn some store credit in the process.

How does everybody catch these little buggers? Was thinking I could use an eye dropper maybe.
 

kormath

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catch cup. I pick up the egg crate they hide in and tap that over a large catch cup (4 cup ziploc storage container) then i use my small condiment cups to scoop them out and separate to feed.
 

SpiderDad61

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Warminster PA
Fantastic. I was worried I'd have to wait a couple months for that and then the 1-4 months for them to hatch.
So far this experiment is working out great. My fish food always expires before I can use it all and I was just about to throw out a few containers when I started this project. These things love fish food!
Also, the warmer u keep them the more they will reproduce
 

kormath

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I can't seem to keep a lateralis colony going. My colony has 2 males and 7 or 8 females and i'm getting hardly any ooths and no ooths to hatch. Just bought a bunch of dubia from nymphs to adult to try and get a colony of those going, we'll see how that works.
 

syzygy

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Location
Texas
I am consistently having 7 or 8 ooths hatch per week and really 2 per week would be a more reasonable rate for my T population. I think I need to cut my adult population down to about 3M and 6F. That combined with the house being a couple degrees cooler for the next few months should help. Most of my T's are in the 1-2" range so once I can get these initial nymphs up to 3/8-1/2" I'll start making a dent in them. At the moment I have about 200 that are1/8" or smaller.
 

kormath

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I am consistently having 7 or 8 ooths hatch per week and really 2 per week would be a more reasonable rate for my T population. I think I need to cut my adult population down to about 3M and 6F. That combined with the house being a couple degrees cooler for the next few months should help. Most of my T's are in the 1-2" range so once I can get these initial nymphs up to 3/8-1/2" I'll start making a dent in them. At the moment I have about 200 that are1/8" or smaller.
That's the size i need now for the 5 new tiny T's I just got. Are you using substrate with your lats?
 

syzygy

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Texas
The adult lats are on a thin layer of coco fiber. Every couple weeks I rotate to a new container with new egg crate to try and minimize smell. I was spraying the coco fiber to keep it moist but stopped doing that...also to reduce smell. They don't seem to mind it being dry so long as they have water crystals and food and a hide. Not sure what my plan is with the growing population of little feeders....might ditch the substrate for them to simplify transfers.

My current ooths are in a small plastic punch cup. I took several paper towels and folded in half and cut a half circle. I wet this down and placed it in the bottom of the cup and piled up the ooths on the other half. I cover the cup about 90% with saran wrap. Every 3-4 days i spray down the back of the cup to moisten the paper towel. I initially had the ooths on the paper towel, but they would mold.

Trying a different method now where every two weeks when i do the transfer I collect those ooths and put them in a condiment cup which I float in another container of water that is mostly covered....little ooth boats. We'll see how that works.
 

kormath

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Never thought of separating the ooths like that. I'll try that with the current ones i have when i get off work.
 

syzygy

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Texas
Quick update....some good, some bad

One the good side my little ooth boats are working fantastic and I have a bunch of little ones

On the downside I had a die off a few weeks ago that seemed to only affect my females. They had food and water so not sure what that was about.
Also I rehoused my roaches on Sunday to a larger tub and found last night that I'd had a mass suicide. They (5M and 2F to be exact) must have jumped from the top of their egg crate about 4" over to a cup of water I was using to maintain humidity. They drowned. The cup was the same height as the top of the egg crate so I'd not been worried about it. Now I'm worried they could possible jump over to the 1/4" air holes I drilled around the top edge of the container. Definitely have to do a daily head count for a while. I now have 2M and 3F which is probably a better level, but doesn't give much wiggle room if I have additional issues. I'm going to transfer about a dozen of my largest juvis (which are not large at all) over to the adult housing so that I don't accidentally feed them off. I may need to also supplement with a few more adults as well so I have feeders for my 2 largest T's in the interim. I really don't want to go back to having crickets.
 

kormath

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Put marbles or something in the cup to keep them from drowning. Or use water gel, that's what i do.
 
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