For protein with cricket bodies?

[millipeter]

What's the author's evidence for the 35% if your field observations are directly contrary? Gut content analysis?

Yes, he used gut content analysis. I just wanted to show with this example that is not a proof to don't see a millipede eating on animal stuff.

Have you had success rearing and breeding AGBs using dead animals?

Yes. But they also had/have plenty of rotten wood a leaves to eat. In Europe many people had success, so it seem to doesn't harm them. But I don't think that this is the best or the only way.

Can anybody give me specifically where in Africa AGBs can be found? Can someone nail it down to a nation or two they can be found in?

Except for the states mentioned above this species occures also in Somalia, Mozambique and the northern part of the state South Africa. A. gigas occures mainly in the arid, warmer and open regions like dry savannahs and not in the cooler, moister and wooded mountains. A. gigas is well adapted on aridity and a few weeks without water and temperatures above 30°C for a longer time periode is not a problem for this species.

 

[Galapoheros]

Some good info in this thread. Maybe I'll get some AGBs someday. Thanks a lot.

 

[cacoseraph]

It sounds like you are hearing those voices as a result of guilt.

1. Selective memory, creative quotation and paraphrasing is one thing, falsifying information is another. Ring furrow regarding OW/NW is something you wholly fabricated and is extremely easy to disprove since the original debate is recorded and readily accessible. Easily proven libel is a quickly won tort and likely against AB rules as well. Despite a few of your comments I'm assuming this spirited debate is primarily a way for you to increase your post count so I am offering you a friendly warning (I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt that you accidentally made up a false quote due to a poor memory and it wasn't a malicious attack; now that you're backpedaling on your fabrication and at the same time you can't seem to remember the post you responded to yesterday, let alone someone else's conversation a few years ago). In the future you might run into someone who can't laugh off libel.

2. Steven was acknowledged for information provided for an article I wrote on breeding Alipes for the March 2006 I-M. His name is also listed in the acknowledgements for help provided for the latest edition. However, it has nothing to do with the physical details used to differentiate Otostigminae described in the latest edition of Giant Centipedes The Enthusiast's Handbook. The described physical detail information was added to a previous edition, and provided by a taxonomist who was also thanked in the acknowledgements. The detail is definitive but wasn't (and maybe still hasn't been) explained here.

3. In your endless search for straws to grasp you may point out I stopped keeping, breeding and offering AGBs a few years ago but it had nothing to do with husbandry (concerns with upcoming regulatory changes). I've published photographic documentation of life stages along with written details and many other's have had the same success with similar rearing setups (repeatability). I was very successful for close to a decade but for many years prior to that, without knowledge of acceptable husbandry, they did not breed and rarely lived more than a year or two. Assuming I can't sift the information from your mountain of incoherent posts, what is your total AGB experience?

4. Reread my first post in this thread a few times (or read it for the first time). Trying to feed a dead cricket as a solution to incorrect feeding instead of solving the problem will just cause more dead animals. Feeding dead crickets is a false cure and false cures can certainly be deadly. Usually I just wince when you offer your husbandry 'advice' theories but sometimes when it looks like people believe you, my concern for other enthusiasts outweighs the barrage of personal attacks I know I'll suffer.

orin, can you please keep your personal problems off a board that is supposed to be about bugs? i enjoy debating about bugs with you... but this is just weird.


also... you have to *prove* intent to harm in libel... would be impossible. i have assured that after all... i am concerned about the wellfare of bugs and am trying to get to the bottom of husbandry issues... i am not sure what motivates your posts


*IF* i am offering advice that you think is bad... why not say so, in specific cases? just throwing out that you think some of my posts are bad, but can't be bothered to correct them seems quite suspect to me, in a number of ways.


i do not think our little debates are coming from the same place for eachof us, nor do i think they are inordinately beneficial to the majority of hobbiests. therefore, with great pain and after careful deliberation, i am going to have to add you to my ignore list

 

[Elytra and Antenna]

Yes. But they also had/have plenty of rotten wood a leaves to eat. In Europe many people had success, so it seem to doesn't harm them. But I don't think that this is the best or the only way.

There are some European breeders on the board and I've seen their photos of cages full of rotten leaves and/or wood but not dead crickets. From your experience would you recommend the use of dead crickets as a necessary (or definitely helpful) food to keep AGBs? Would you say it's not likely to lead to fouled substrate down the line or do you just have to be more careful and change the substrate more?

Many of your examples are very different from the commonly kept ''giant millipede" orders Spirobolida and Spirostreptida but certainly the Spirostreptid bat-dropping-eating species is a neat example.

 

[Elytra and Antenna]

...off a board that is supposed to be about bugs?

Your false statements are in reference to myriapods. I don't know why you'd bring up a chilopod taxonomy issue to reference a diplopod husbandry question but you did.

also... you have to *prove* intent to harm in libel... would be impossible.

Your constantly ripping on the same products you often quote is clear intent. You can say your opinions till the cows come home but you can't write up false information and quote it to someone else.

*IF* i am offering advice that you think is bad... why not say so, in specific cases?

Everything you ask of me you refuse to do yourself. Read back a few of your own posts where you use the word ALL.

i am going to have to add you to my ignore list

If only you were telling the truth.

 

[NBond1986]

milipedes can sting you with their stinger. their poisonus and can kill 3 adult horsess


if a milped bit you, you woud die.


i dont like them


im on Orin's side.

 

[Nich]

I've found through extensive research that they actually get thier protiene from the dead skin cells that fly off your fingers and float to thier cages from the activity of a random thread.....without this they will eat thier young Just yanking.....seriously...anyone want to make some cliffnotes for the protine consumtion requirments of an AGB?

 

[millipeter]

There are some European breeders on the board and I've seen their photos of cages full of rotten leaves and/or wood but not dead crickets.

The majority of the European breeders I know use fishflakes but people that are keeping other animals who need crickets feed the dead ones to the millipedes. You can also feed them dead phasmids or even groundmeat.

From your experience would you recommend the use of dead crickets as a necessary (or definitely helpful) food to keep AGBs?

As I mentioned before it is very little known about the need of protein of millipedes but I think A. gigas "like it" and because millipedes are quite selective in their preferences of type of food and it seems that A. gigas doesn't refuse it I would assume that they need it in a certain quantity. If an A. gigas would crawling around in Tansania and there lies a dead grasshopper he would most likely eat it. Maybe it's just another source of energy for them or they need it essentially? Maybe the total absence of protein in their entire lifecycle leads to physical problems but that have to be investigated. That are just my thoughts and I don't say that you must feed protein to them.

Would you say it's not likely to lead to fouled substrate down the line or do you just have to be more careful and change the substrate more?

I feed every 3-4 weeks fishflakes to them and if you don't feed to much it doesn't lead to fouled substrate, maybe a bit of mold if it was too much and this will be often eat by the millipedes too. A single cricket is eaten within a few minutes. I change the substrate in my tanks every 2 years by the way.

Many of your examples are very different from the commonly kept ''giant millipede" orders Spirobolida and Spirostreptida but certainly the Spirostreptid bat-dropping-eating species is a neat example.

Only 3 of 7 examples were very different from the order Spirobolida/Spirostreptida I also know reports from people that stayed in Kenya that have seen different species of "giant millipedes" that ate together on carcasses of bigger arthropods...

 

[Elytra and Antenna]

The majority of the European breeders I know use fishflakes but people that are keeping other animals who need crickets feed the dead ones to the millipedes. You can also feed them dead phasmids or even groundmeat.

I feed every 3-4 weeks fishflakes to them and if you don't feed to much it doesn't lead to fouled substrate, maybe a bit of mold if it was too much and this will be often eat by the millipedes too. A single cricket is eaten within a few minutes. I change the substrate in my tanks every 2 years by the way.

Only 3 of 7 examples were very different from the order Spirobolida/Spirostreptida

So you don't actually feed your AGB millipedes dead crickets as a normal part of your regular care?

I've long recommended (in print) fish flakes and a number of other items as a supplement to the millipede diet.

3 of 7 is many, not most, and for spirostreptids that was the only 'detritus' example, the others are accidental consumption and active predation. I don't think anyone could know if the listed predation events are atypical. I've seen a television show with mantids eating a snake and pygmy mouse but haven't seen any mantis breeders suggest that feeding mouse parts is needed to cure dying immature mantids.

The point here is that if a hobbyist's baby AGBs are dying its not helpful to suggest a few dead crickets is going to be the "cure".

 

[Galapoheros]

My comments might bother some since I've never kept AGBs, but I can't help it, I feel like "if" your baby millis were eaten by other millis then you might not have enough food variety that would leave your millis hungry for any bio material they would come across. They might have died and been eaten by others or eaten by others while molting. The dead leaves, the wood, it may leave them craving for something more. gr8rep, you haven't commented on whether or not you've been feeding them anything other than wood and leaves before your thread was posted. I think everybody wants to help even though some productive disagreements have popped up. Don't let the debate stuff run you off. Some people like that kind of thing though it's not my nature. For some it's normal and even fun. Veggies, ripe fruit, a pinch of fish flakes ..that just sounds like it might take care of a problem like it sounds you are having. Let us know what you do and how it goes.

 

[fantasticp]

Just to hear it said: caco, low ventilation is fine.

I keep all my millis in temperature controlled boaphile racks. Very little ventilation. Mold occurances do happen when "seasoning" new dirt, but after the substrate is well seasoned mold is almost non-existent unless you feed a high molding fruit such as strawberries. I like to think of the substrate as a living entity in itself, as the quality, texture, and moisture content of substrate has A LOT to do with survival of babies and general health of the millipedes. In a microenvironment like we all keep our pets in, achieving the correct level of decay ideal for millipedes can be tricky at first, and hard to control mold, but if you bury the molded food when it happens and don't panic, eventually everything settles out in the tank and those issues stop being a problem.

...Just had to say it. These are kind of my thing.