Questions about the premeture demise of my Extatosoma tiaratums

Craig

Arachnoknight
Old Timer
Joined
Oct 12, 2002
Messages
246
Can anyone help me solve this mystery :

last month I bought 3 E.tiaratums. They appeared healthy. I had them a month, and for completely unknown reasons they died. they started dropping to the substrate one after another. One would “drop” then 3 days later another one would “drop”. here is the facts on how I was keeping them.

-enclosure 2’x2’x2’ arboreal lizard (? fancy setup. )
-Peat moss substrate
- temp 0f 83-83 degrees F in the day and 78 at night. the median temperature for the amount of days monitored was 81.3 degrees.

- they were heated with a flexi watt mat on the back of the enclosure

- they were fed rose leaves from a plant that I have had for 10 years with NO exposure to insecticide or chemicals. other food plants were offered but they did not eat any others.
- they were misted twice a day. (I’m assuming the humidity was adequate)

- they had a shallow water dish.

- when they would drop from the top of the enclose they would lay half alive and twisted for a couple days prior to dying. When this happened to the first one I thought it might have been a glucose problem. I injected 0.20cc of a glucose solution in to the animal being careful not to hit anything major. This was successful and the animal regained conciousnes and full use of all limbs within a day of the injection.
The animal was taken out of ICU and placed back into the enclosure. She died two days later. (not as a result of the injection) I preformed no other experimental life saving techniques on the rest of them.

- they all had molted once since I got them. they were close to 5in long.

- I only had time to necropsy one (the one I did the injection on). I also did not get to run any bacteriological tests because I was very busy and I could not run any chemical tests because by the time I had time to do them the specimens were starting to decompose.

I am thinking they might have had a parasite. But again I had no time to look at samples in detail under a microscope because of my busy schedule.
can anyone think of what could have happened. I am completely baffled. I thought I had them set up perfect. I was really, really attached to these little guys. Anyways thank-you all for reading. maybe this info can some how be helpful to others.
 

Steven

pede-a-holic
Old Timer
Joined
Feb 18, 2003
Messages
4,022
Hey,... i used to have E.T's,... 10 specimen
with almost the same set-up as yours,....

and i've seen those guys "drop" also,... first alll males would drop and after that the females,.... very strange :(

the only reason i can think of is that the breed i got weren't sexual bred specimen,... ET's can reproduce themself "parthegenetic" (don't know if that's an english word?)
but that reproduces rather fragile nimfs,... sexual bred nimfs are considerd to be much stronger,.....

any idea of the origin of your nimfs,
i mean how they were reproduced?

sorry for my bad english, hopefully i've made it a bit understandable :D
 

Bob

Arachnoangel
Old Timer
Joined
Sep 17, 2002
Messages
777
I have had adult females live over a year after final molt. Mine lived on blackberry only, no roses. I fed my Vietnamese sticks roses but not the et's. I placed an adult female on a blackberry plant in my backyard in may and it lived on the plant until it just died about 2 weeks ago. Not bad since I live in Oregon. Our summer was warm though. I always kept the indoor specimins at 70 degrees F or so...never warmer. The large female I kept outside was always in the shade and never was out sunning itself. I guess I can only suggest is to keep them cooler and feed them blackberry leaves.
Check out my friend Peter's web site at www.bugsincyberspace.com
I keep my leaf insects the same way..........................
Bob
 

Bob

Arachnoangel
Old Timer
Joined
Sep 17, 2002
Messages
777
Here is the female that was living in my back yard on blackberry

Bob
 

Craig

Arachnoknight
Old Timer
Joined
Oct 12, 2002
Messages
246
Thanks guys!!


the only reason i can think of is that the breed i got weren't sexual bred specimen,... ET's can reproduce themself "parthegenetic" (don't know if that's an english word?)
I would like to do a study and see how this effects them. I have no clue where my specimens came from but, I am pretty sure they were reproduced asexually. thanks again :)

btw.. I've cecked out bugs in cyberspace before. I think it is an AWESOME site. I also think it is THE best stick insect site!!
he did a very good job. I was very impressed. Also I couldn't find any black berry around by where I live. I was very frustrated about it. Can I buy a black berry plant some where? maybe I will get some more ET's and set them up in my house on that.
 
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