giant african waterscorpions

[dtknow]

Anyone here breed/have any experience with them lately? They seem to be always around in small quantities but I seldom see them for sale.

 

[Arne]

I have had 3 for a few weeks now. They seem to do fine in a small aquarium; they sit around all day in strike position, pretty much like mantids. They'll grab about anything that moves in front of them, I mostly feed them crickets.

That's about it for now.

 

[Malhavoc's]

how do you entice them to eat the crickets? partly submerged? or just trashing on the water?

 

[Arne]

They will grab crickets even if they're just floating on the water; i even saw one of them grab a mosquito that hatched from it's floating pupae.

Mostly I just offer food to the water scorpion with a pair of forceps; I sometimes put them on a piece of corkbark floating in the tank;they sometimes get grabbed when they fall or jump off; if not they usually manage to climb back upon the corkbark. Ofcourse, there's always the risk they just drown, so to be sure I prefer "controlled feeding".

 

[ErikWestblom]

How big do they get? I found a normal one here in sweden yesterday, it was about and inch, maybe a bit bigger, but that's as big as they get here

 

[Arne]

The ones i have are about 4 inches, but they can get bigger. However, mine are adults already.
They are also much faster than the small water scorpions we have around here; tremendous swimmers, much like a diving beetle (Dytiscus)

 

[josh_r]

post some pics of them!!

 

[Elytra and Antenna]

There are many different kinds of waterscorpions but the two main body types are stick-like such as Ranatra or water bug-like such as Nepa.
Here's some pics of the Nepa type:
giant waterscorpions