Hi, first of all, I've been lurking on these forums for a few weeks and I just wanted to say they're an absolute wealth of information, all of you guys rock.
I live up in Ontario, Canada, and over the weekend I was camping in Algonquin park and managed to catch what I'm pretty sure is a Lethocerus (I'm at work now, I'll be able to confirm this when I get home tonight).
I searched and read the threads on this board concerning these guys, but I still have a few questions, and I was wondering if any of you could help clear them up for me..
1) When I was bringing it home from the park, the water it was in warmed up substantially and it started spasming and could not swim, so I dumped out the water so it did'nt drown, hoping it would at least survive until I could get it back in some cool water. When I got home cool water almost instantly revived it.
Would it be possible to acclimate it to warmer (indoor) temperatures? Because currently it's sitting in a jar which is floating in the middle of a pond in my backyard, not an ideal setup.
2) I tried offering it earthworms (as well as anything else I found during the camping trip) to eat, it snapped at one of them once with it's front legs, but didn't make a move after that. Do these need to eat very often? It's been 3 nights since I caught it, and I'm not sure if it's simply not hungry, stressed, or if it won't eat food that isn't from its native habitat. Today I'm going to pick up some crickets for the rest of my animals and try those, as well as a few feeder guppies. Has anyone else had problems feeding wild caught water bugs? Do they eat better during the day? at night? Should I just leave a few fish in it's enclosure over night?
Anyway, any advice/input at all would be much appreciated, thanks everyone!
I live up in Ontario, Canada, and over the weekend I was camping in Algonquin park and managed to catch what I'm pretty sure is a Lethocerus (I'm at work now, I'll be able to confirm this when I get home tonight).
I searched and read the threads on this board concerning these guys, but I still have a few questions, and I was wondering if any of you could help clear them up for me..
1) When I was bringing it home from the park, the water it was in warmed up substantially and it started spasming and could not swim, so I dumped out the water so it did'nt drown, hoping it would at least survive until I could get it back in some cool water. When I got home cool water almost instantly revived it.
Would it be possible to acclimate it to warmer (indoor) temperatures? Because currently it's sitting in a jar which is floating in the middle of a pond in my backyard, not an ideal setup.
2) I tried offering it earthworms (as well as anything else I found during the camping trip) to eat, it snapped at one of them once with it's front legs, but didn't make a move after that. Do these need to eat very often? It's been 3 nights since I caught it, and I'm not sure if it's simply not hungry, stressed, or if it won't eat food that isn't from its native habitat. Today I'm going to pick up some crickets for the rest of my animals and try those, as well as a few feeder guppies. Has anyone else had problems feeding wild caught water bugs? Do they eat better during the day? at night? Should I just leave a few fish in it's enclosure over night?
Anyway, any advice/input at all would be much appreciated, thanks everyone!
