Caring for small pedelings?

[GartenSpinnen]

How hard is caring for small centipedes around 1"? I have never kept any that small and i am thinking about investing some money into some babies and letting them get a bit larger then flipping them for a little more money. So if anyone has a bunch of babies they are looking to get rid of id be interested also.
-Nate

PS- Im really interested in S. heros

 

[cacoseraph]

not hard at all


they dry out amazingly easy, is the only "trick". most of my cages for babies have 0-2 pinholes for vent and that is it. the more vent the more perfect and watering you have to be

 

[Mister Internet]

not hard at all


they dry out amazingly easy, is the only "trick". most of my cages for babies have 0-2 pinholes for vent and that is it. the more vent the more perfect and watering you have to be

^^^ What he said...

Also, unless you're going to be doing it on a large scale, or happen to come across plings of some rare species, the "payback" for raising plings to adults for money is less than nothing, all things considered. I've hatched out a couple broods of S. heros, and it takes a couple of years to get them to "sub-adult" size. That, combined with the time spent caring for them, hardly makes up for the "profit" between buying a $5 pling and selling a $35 adult. Figure you buy 10 @ $5 (which is really optimistic, I've never gotten them that cheap except fire sales at shows) and raise them for 2 years to sell them for $35 each. That's a $200 profit, but after you figure that group of ten will have taken an hour of your time per month to maintain properly, you're making like 8 bucks an hour for all your trouble. Totally not worth it, and trust me, you won't want to sell them once you've raised them, I speak from personal experience!

 

[cacoseraph]

^^^ What he said...

Also, unless you're going to be doing it on a large scale, or happen to come across plings of some rare species, the "payback" for raising plings to adults for money is less than nothing, all things considered. I've hatched out a couple broods of S. heros, and it takes a couple of years to get them to "sub-adult" size. That, combined with the time spent caring for them, hardly makes up for the "profit" between buying a $5 pling and selling a $35 adult. Figure you buy 10 @ $5 (which is really optimistic, I've never gotten them that cheap except fire sales at shows) and raise them for 2 years to sell them for $35 each. That's a $200 profit, but after you figure that group of ten will have taken an hour of your time per month to maintain properly, you're making like 8 bucks an hour for all your trouble. Totally not worth it, and trust me, you won't want to sell them once you've raised them, I speak from personal experience!

i'm glad someone else told him the bad news

IF you have a roach colony AND you don't consider your own time spent on them you can make spreadsheets to show you are making money. but if you truly acccount for all costs... bugs are hard to make dough on. the scale of operation needed to make decent real money is pretty scary. i have hundreds of bugs at any one time and there is no way i am even close to making money. and i have had something like 15 broods of centipedes, 10-20 broods of scorps, and 3-4 eggsacs (or parts there of) to pad my bottom line with.


but... what you can TOTALLY do is support your bug habit WITH your bug habit. if you are patient you can probably do trades that would alleviate your need to *buy* more bugs.










incidentily, i think to flip bugs you are almost obligated to work with species taht mature in less than a year. that is the only way i can genuinely see making money without having thousands of babies at some points

 

[bluefrogtat2]

agree

not much of a money making investment.but sure are fun to raise.have fun
andy

 

[cacoseraph]

actually i take it all back


if you get a poster species you could possibly actually make dough


good luck getting the poster species to make the babies though.... or finding many babies to buy at once, otherwise

 

[Mister Internet]

actually i take it all back


if you get a poster species you could possibly actually make dough


good luck getting the poster species to make the babies though.... or finding many babies to buy at once, otherwise

Heh... yeah, I'd totally take a crack at it with Malaysian Jewels or S. hardwicki ... but S. heros? Nah... way too cheap and abundant WC, and way too cool to get rid of once you've raised them.

 

[cacoseraph]

you know, i have another way someone could maybe make money off of this... but it is NOT a flip strategy


i think if someone really got good with pedes and could make a designer cultivar they could charge more than normal baby pede prices. i am really working on growing up a pure yellow Scolopendra polymorpha that i caught (the only one out of ~100 to have NO stripes at all!) to get it to breeding size to see how(if) it gets passed. i might end up having to line or inbreed to get it to express most of the time though. so.... i should have some kind of results in by about 2018 heehhehe

of course... this is sort of like telling someone that wants to sell fruit on the corner that the real way to make fruit money is to buy an orchard. probably true but not especially helpful

 

[GartenSpinnen]

Thanks for the replies. Im not really looking to get rich its more of doing something just for the fun of doing it ya know?
-Nate

 

[cacoseraph]

Thanks for the replies. Im not really looking to get rich its more of doing something just for the fun of doing it ya know?
-Nate

perfect then


sometimes there are ppl who really think that bugs are the ticket to quick and easy money. it is generally neither quick nor easy.



you might want to find a smaller species that reaches sexual maturity in only 1-2 years. i think heros are more in the ~3+ year range, even with fast captive condition growing. though galapoheros can get them to 3+"BL in about a year, iirc. but... if you want heros babies then gala would probably be the one to hit up. in spring though... i don't know if he has all that much in the way of babies he would be willing to sell/trade right now... but i wouldn't be too surprised if he gets more than 150 babies in the spring (IF i am remembering what all he has cooking right now... which is somewhat iffy... i can barely remember all the bugs *i* have hhehehe)