🕷 Invertebrate Enthusiasts 🕷

[emjayy]

🕷-If this Grammostola pulchripes has frightened you, you may be in the wrong thread-🕷

Hello! After a little searching I’ve noticed that there’s no chat on invertebrates for oddballs like me who love them. So welcome to a little thread for the minority who love invertebrates!

Invertebrates are any animals without a backbone, so if you have pet tarantulas, scorpions, snails, beetles etc I would love to hear about them or see pictures. Feel free to discuss anything from taxonomy to phobias. As long as it’s related to inverts and follows CS forum rules.

-Would like to own one but not sure what’s right for you?
-Would like to know what’s needed for a certain species?
-Or found species you’d like to try identify correctly?
This thread may be able to help you!

CS has even got a few for us to adopt ❤️


Species: Pterinochilus murinus

Species: Monocentrophus balfouri

Species: Brachypelma smithi

Species: Poecilotheria regalis

I will build this up more as I go but for now, feel free to post 💕

[Axolotl_On_A_Plain]

I dont keep any inverts currently but i have been interested in keeping millipedes, beetles and mantids and hope to keep either one day after more research. I love finding inverts in the wild and taking pictures and trying to identify them, there are so many different species and i think theyre all just amazing. Yesterday i found 2 bright blue damsel flies and a centipede, i was very happy to come across them

Do you keep any inverts Blackiie?

[emjayy]

I dont keep any inverts currently but i have been interested in keeping millipedes, beetles and mantids and hope to keep either one day after more research. I love finding inverts in the wild and taking pictures and trying to identify them, there are so many different species and i think theyre all just amazing. Yesterday i found 2 bright blue damsel flies and a centipede, i was very happy to come across them

Do you keep any inverts Blackiie?

Ooo mantids honestly are the best. Ghost mantis and orchid mantis would be two faves. Beetles are great but sadly don’t live very long as adults, my friend has rainbow stag beetles and they’re amazing but do not last long enough. Same though! Im constantly keeping an eye out for wieird things.

At the moment I have 2 African giant land snails(Lissachatina fulica), a European giant house spider (Eratigena atrica) and 2 tarantulas but not in my house. A Grammostola pulchripesmale and a female Grammostola pulchra. I’ve started on the very easy and docile Ts 😂 I had Indian stick insects but they only live for one year, they made such easy little pets. I’m hoping to get more!

[Axolotl_On_A_Plain]

Orchid mantis are definantly my fave. I was planning to possibly get some stag beetles but i was put off by their short adult life.
Giant land snails are so cute!! I love tarantulas as well. Do you ever handle them? I know that some people do but if I had one I think I would be a bit worried about scaring it or something, but then again i dont really know about their temperments or anything.

[emjayy]

Orchid mantis are definantly my fave. I was planning to possibly get some stag beetles but i was put off by their short adult life.
Giant land snails are so cute!! I love tarantulas as well. Do you ever handle them? I know that some people do but if I had one I think I would be a bit worried about scaring it or something, but then again i dont really know about their temperments or anything.

I do handle them but not often as it can stress them out. It’s easy with the docile species! I use a paintbrush and brush them to see what mood they’re in 😂 But 99% the golden knee is fine and the Brazilian Black is almost the same! It is nerve wrecking though!
My friend has big scary species like gooty ornamentals and baboons. I love them but heccc they’re scary boys.

[Salamandaa]

I have a dubia roach colony I'm trying to get set up as feeders.
They're pretty cool, the store I bought them from only had adult females however so I bought 10 females. I put in several nymphs in the colony that are hopefully males so I'm waiting for them to grow to adults so they can breed. They're super easy too, which is nice. I feed them whatever fruits/veggies I have around the house, typically oranges, but today I put in some bits of my salad and they seemed to really enjoy that as well.

Here is a pic of one of the adult females, she's a lighter color than the rest of them. Kinda golden-brown. Whenever I get any that are interesting colors I will likely save as breeders so that the color will stay in the gene pool.

[emjayy]

I have a dubia roach colony I'm trying to get set up as feeders.
They're pretty cool, the store I bought them from only had adult females however so I bought 10 females. I put in several nymphs in the colony that are hopefully males so I'm waiting for them to grow to adults so they can breed. They're super easy too, which is nice. I feed them whatever fruits/veggies I have around the house, typically oranges, but today I put in some bits of my salad and they seemed to really enjoy that as well.

Here is a pic of one of the adult females, she's a lighter color than the rest of them. Kinda golden-brown. Whenever I get any that are interesting colors I will likely save as breeders so that the color will stay in the gene pool.

Aw I love Dubias. We use them as feeders too but I do like keeping them. The tarantulas, scorpions, centipede and blue tongue skink seem to do really well off them.

That’s a really good idea, I know colour morphs of feeders are quite popular ^^

[hapalopus]

So glad this thread exists, even if it's not very active ;w;

I went to a reptile expo today and I didn't intend to buy anything, but still ended up coming home with 7 Black Beauty stick insects that I love to death and will protect with my life

[Silxe]

YES FINALLY THE TREAD FOR ME!!

I'm a huge invert enthuisiast, but I don't currently own any, as literally any bug I want is banned from my country :,)
I get it, but sometimes I really wish some weren't. And I don't like taking bugs from the wild, either, so all I can do for now is point at them and hope.

My dream inverts are the extinct roach and the giant African millipede. They're so dang cute, and would've been great to have. They are literally the only reason I would move away from here.

Also, Popcorn, those black beauty's are gorgeous. I've seen them online before and was absolutely captivated. Very lucky to have, I'd love to see more of them!

[hapalopus]

I didn't know about extinct roaches but I just looked them up and they're gorgeous!! As are all giant millipedes ;v;

And thank you! I'll give them some extra (metaphorical) smooches from you. I'm actually about to clean their terrarium for the first time right now. I figure I might as well show y'all the process!

The set-up. I use papertowel, hand soap, a sponge, an old (unused) toothbrush, an old towel, a spray-bottle, and a plastic container for the bugs.


1. First I put the bugs in the plastic box and check the terrarium for eggs (I only found one, the rest is just poop. What no one tells you about stick insects is that they poop a lot. All this grime is from just three days). Then I sort their leaves, throw out the old ones and put the fresh ones to the side.



2. I clean the water bowl with hand soap. Dish soap is more effective, but I'm afraid I won't rinse it off thoroughly enough and end up hurting my bugs. Hand soap is effective enough when you're just dealing with herbivorous insects.I rinse the leaves to get them free of poop and urea and just shake the excess water off. No need to dry them as stick insects generally prefer drinking off leaves (though one of mine seems to prefer drinking it off the walls of their enclosure).

3. I mist the now empty terrarium and wipe excrement off with a paper towel Then I spray with soap and water and start scrubbing it all over. For the cracks I use the toothbrush.Then I just rinse off the soap in a sink, wipe it down and set it in the sun to be sure it's dry.


4. Now for the fun part! Furnishing the enclosure again. As substrate I just use a few folded paper towels. The keep moisture about as well as dirt and they make cleaning, collecting eggs, and disinfecting so much easier.
Around this part I had to admit to myself that the bowl was too big to be practical. I was afraid it might crush some of the eggs, or even worse, some of the bugs, so I decided to go hunting for something else to put the leaves in. Luckily, I'm a conneisseur of garbage and had a few bottles lying around that could do the job. To make sure they didn't fall, I propped them up with wet paper towels (improvised paper mache lol). And that's it!