Narceus rehousing

Exoskelos

Arachnosquire
Joined
Sep 15, 2017
Messages
137
So, I've been busy these past few weeks securing enough substrate for hungry pedelings. A couple weeks ago, noticed that my large narceus and one of the smaller ones were engaged in courtship behavior. I found it surprising, as I thought I only had females. Some of the immatures were harder to sex though, might have missed one too. Anyway, I've got them moved into a large Sterilite tub, with 4-5 inches of finely pulped wood and coir. Couldn't allow myself to let them overpopulate, already was running risk of crowding the ten gallon.

Anyway, enough of my disconnected banter. Here are some photos.
This one was when they were in the ten gallon, its what spurred me to rehouse the lot of them. I suspect I will have quite a few of this dark color morph soon.
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Moved them all, noticed that the pedelings are developing at different rates, some are almost to subadult stage, but the majority are still very small. I wonder if it might be relative to the times they were laid, or perhaps varying food quality in different areas of the enclosure.
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Here's the matriarch of the colony, surveying new kingdom for her subjects. She'll probably lay eggs around August, hopefully the pedelings from last year will reach a decent size, least enough to tell the broods apart.
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General overview of the new enclosure. Its about 4 times the area of the ten gallon tank I had them in, plenty of room for them to stretch out. I had to wait a few weeks before moving them, they were in a mass molt, otherwise I would have done this a month ago.
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Exoskelos

Arachnosquire
Joined
Sep 15, 2017
Messages
137
More of the pedelings. They all are from the same clutch, dunno why there is such a size difference. These little ones were conveniently on the surface by the butternut squash, there are at least 50 more of roughly similar size, the real number is probably close to 70 or 80, all from the one large female. Don't know what I'll do with them all if a second brood hatches this year, especially since I have over a dozen mature millipedes now.
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mickiem

Arachnoprince
Active Member
Joined
Jul 23, 2016
Messages
1,652
Moved them all, noticed that the pedelings are developing at different rates, some are almost to subadult stage, but the majority are still very small. I wonder if it might be relative to the times they were laid, or perhaps varying food quality in different areas of the enclosure.
I think they lay the eggs over a period of time. My Tan N. americanus probably laid eggs for 2 months. Also, could it be gender related?
 

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Exoskelos

Arachnosquire
Joined
Sep 15, 2017
Messages
137
I think they lay the eggs over a period of time. My Tan N. americanus probably laid eggs for 2 months. Also, could it be gender related?
That's a sound possibility. I didn't think about it being gender related, since they aren't mature yet, although mature males are significantly smaller that females. I will most likely be going to the CinCity expo again this month, but I'm not sure.

Also, here's a group of pedes feeding, they have a tendency to be extremely active on the surface from 3 to 8 AM. That dark one is the morph, it looks different under various light conditions, hard to pin down its actual color via photo.
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