Dynastes tityus and no eggs?

kitty_b

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i have a male and female pair who emerged from hibernation earlier this year. both appear to be eating well on pure maple syrup and the occational piece of fruit (they love apple!).

the poor girl is CONSTANTLY having to deal with her always-horny roommate, even tolerating his piggybacking while she eats. i've seen several occasions where they're "joined," so i know he's not just lazy. :rolleyes:

anyway, despite all this "motion" i haven't seen a single egg. i just went through the entire tank (carefully, of course) and worked on every potential clump i found. (their substrate is the recommended dead wood/compost/dried leaves, about 4" thick. it's definitely "compactable" and humidity is maintained by a mostly-covered lid.)

any idea why i'm eggless? i'm not really clear on how long the gap is between breeding and egg laying, so maybe it's just too early in the season?
 

bugmankeith

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Have you ever raised the before? Some species are much harder to breed than others, and sometimes your average person isnt able to successfully breed a certain species.

Their probably not as easy to breed like cockroaches, not saying you dont know what your doing, just saying mabye their really difficult to breed in captivity and thats why no eggs are showing up.

Anyway good luck with it mabye youll get lucky and get eggs soon.
 

Mat

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I'm hoping to breed some of these beetles in the future, at the moment I'm rearing 1 pair of larvae and have another pair coming soon as an exchange.

I have sucessfully bred several other species of Dynastid beetles in the past, things like Xylotrupes, Allomyrhina and Dynastes hercules - I got 125+ Dynastes hercules eggs from 5 females over the winter. If I were setting up a breeding tank for these species I would be looking to put at least 2-3 times the depth of substrate into the tank than you have at present. I think you problem is that you may not have a deep enough layer of substrate so the female is not laying.

For laying tanks for these beetles I use a substrate made of commercial peat free garden compost / soil without fertilizer - the stuff you get for potting up plants or sowing seeds, white rotted wood (oak in my case) and well decayed leaves (leaf mould).

I seive my wood and leaf with a garden seive so that I only have fine particles of both, big lumps of wood or whole dry leaves are not what you want. Essentialy I am looking for stuff like slightly lumpy coarse sawduts

I mix the compost, wood and leaf litter together in about a 2-1-1 ratio. In practice it tends to be 2-3 scoops of compost plus 1 of wood plus 1 of leaf litter. Mix it up well so you end up with compost speckled throughout with little bits of wood and leaf litter. The leaves and wood provide the initial food for the larvae while the compost helps as a carrier and is more easily compacted.

Get the deepest tank you have and fill it half way with the substrate. Press this down as hard as you can so that it is almost solid - you should be able to pack it down to about half its original depth. Add some more substrate and firm this down too but more gently - just gentle patting will do. Top this off with some loose substrate and some logs or bits of bark for the adults to hang onto. Aim for a depth of substrate of at least 8 inches, 12+ would be better.

When the females start laying they may disappear underground for several days or even a week or more. Just make sure there is food for them up top. Maple syrup is ok but long term I would give them banana to eat, its got more food value than maple syrup - which is essentailly a sugar solution flavoured with tree. Females may spend several days feeding on a big chunk of banana and then vanish underground again.

Add the beetles to the tank and wait. Wait some more ( the hard part ). Wait a bit longer still. Eggs of some species can be quite fragile. As long as you are still seeing the female on occasion wait. I would leave the tank for at least 8 weeks after seeing the female for the last time before I went looking for eggs or larvae. If you do have larvae they will be quite happy sitting inside little cells in the compact substrate - waiting untill they are a few weeks old deminishes the risk of damage to newly hatched larvae.

I'd be interested to know under what conditions you hibernated your adults - can you tell us how you did it?


Matt
 

Elytra and Antenna

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Is the substrate reasonably fine and extremely damp? D.tityus is one of the easier rhinos to rear but getting them to lay eggs is not always easy. The preparation (well ground) and source of the wood and leaves commonly makes a big difference on the female's egg laying desire.

i have a male and female pair who emerged from hibernation earlier this year. both appear to be eating well on pure maple syrup and the occational piece of fruit (they love apple!).

the poor girl is CONSTANTLY having to deal with her always-horny roommate, even tolerating his piggybacking while she eats. i've seen several occasions where they're "joined," so i know he's not just lazy. :rolleyes:

anyway, despite all this "motion" i haven't seen a single egg. i just went through the entire tank (carefully, of course) and worked on every potential clump i found. (their substrate is the recommended dead wood/compost/dried leaves, about 4" thick. it's definitely "compactable" and humidity is maintained by a mostly-covered lid.)

any idea why i'm eggless? i'm not really clear on how long the gap is between breeding and egg laying, so maybe it's just too early in the season?
 

loxoscelesfear

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tityus

try 50 % top soil, 50 % compost manure. collect rotten wood and leaf litter and bake it @ 250 degrees for 3 hours. mix this all up in a gallon jar and toss the female in and leave her alone for a month, then start sifting thru soil for eggs. do not keep male and female together. once they have mated seperate them.

once you find lil eggs j/ leave em' alone, they hatch in about a month.
keep the grubs in the same type of container: 50 % top soil, 50 % compost manure.rotten wood etc good luck
 

kitty_b

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i actually got these two from padkison, who hibernated them and made the substrate based on orin mcmonigle's book. it's not packed at the moment (i thought the female packs her eggs, so i left it relatively soft for burrowing.

it sounds like the problem may be the substrate depth. i'll look into either making more, or ordering some (for a quick fix).

they *have* been given banana before, but i decided to take it out after the male spent 2 days trying to breed with it. :eek:
 

Jonathan

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hi,
What size is your egg laying container. I read that you should use a large storage tub. Like three feet by two feet. The bottom four inches or so should be compacted pretty hard. I use a board to achieve this. This is where the female will lay her eggs. The above substrate need not be compacted. Also, did you use any pine wood? This website may help:
http://www.naturalworlds.org/scarabaeidae/manual/hercules/Dynastes_hercules_breeding_1.htm
Jon
 

kitty_b

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the tank i was given was a 5.5 gallon tank. there are only two beetles, so i guess it was assumed they didn't need a lot of ground space.

reading through the book, it recommended a maximum size tank of 10 gallons (but can be smaller) and 4-6" of substrate. this tank appears to be closer to 3" deep... so i think we've found the problem.

i think the wood/leaf component of the substrate is all oak.
 

loxoscelesfear

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dynastes

i found my beetles in a parking lot late July last year, I j/ tossed em together for a few days and had eggs by Sept. by Novemeber I had grubs. my grubs are 3 inches now but i bet it'll be september b4 they change to adults... maybe even longer. patience seems to be the key in dealing w/ these beetles. the adults absolutley love apple slices soaked in diluted syrup. dog food for the grubs is good if ya dont mind changing out molding dog food every few days, but always make wood available to the grubs as well{D
 

kitty_b

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i think i really need more females. this poor girl needs a break. :(
 

kitty_b

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the male apparently bred himself to death. guy was fine yesterday, but looked very lethargic this afternoon, and appears to have passed while we were out running errands. :(
 

Elytra and Antenna

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the male apparently bred himself to death. guy was fine yesterday, but looked very lethargic this afternoon, and appears to have passed while we were out running errands. :(
He died prematurely, a shorter life is caused by feeding fruit to rhinos.
 

Elytra and Antenna

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You don't need another male, any eggs the female lays in the next four months will be fertile. She probably won't live that many months. Good luck getting 30-50 eggs. Try changes to the substrate if she isn't laying eggs in the next week or so.
 

kitty_b

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adults seem hard enough to come by right now.

the substrate supplier seems to be out. i may have to move her to a container that's got less width/length so i can increase depth with what i have. i don't think i have stuff around here to make new substrate on short notice.
 

Elytra and Antenna

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adults seem hard enough to come by right now.

the substrate supplier seems to be out. i may have to move her to a container that's got less width/length so i can increase depth with what i have. i don't think i have stuff around here to make new substrate on short notice.
I know, that's how I know how old yours are. People normally only offer grubs because there's little effort in that whereas C.B. adults take a lot of time and work.

It's the dampness, consistency or type of substrate you're using, depth is not the problem you have. You probably don't need new substrate, find a few handfuls of old leaves, grind them to near powder and bury them in a spot in the substrate.

u wanna know how big D.tityus can get?85 mm
http://insectforum.no-ip.org/gods/cgi-bin/topic.cgi?forum=2&topic=7942&show=50
this one looks like miniature D.hercules, it's about 83mm
You do know there are two species in the US and the one you have pictured is not the one we're talking about, right? That beetle is not D. tityus.
 

Randolph XX()

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lol
i am just making a size comparison, saying it could be bigger than that one
if u could read carefuly i didn't say the one in the picture is D.tytus, it is infact D.granti
 
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