communal insect set up?

I'm trying to think of possibilities of communal set ups for insects. Without the fear of them devouring or killing the other species.

And the only thing I can think of would be the various "desert beetles" as they're called by Peter from Bugsincyberspace.

The death feigning beetles and darklings, I think they consist of

I think even velvet ants have been successfully kept with darkling beetles?


It would be a great bonus if they even breed successfully in the communal set up.

I had a couple of communal tanks set up with millipedes and I quickly learned it wasn't as wonderful as I thought it was because once they started breeding and had babies I couldn't tell them apart until they got fairly old! lol but other than that millipedes (not insects... I know lol) are very communal! I have also had great luck with butterflies and moths in a communal enclosure!

I'm quite interested in this as well, would love to hear others chime in!

As far as other communal insects, roaches do pretty well. There's a wide variety out there and I read that multiple species can be kept together (however if able to breed, one might dominate the other, numbers wise, so I'd keep an eye on that part).

If you want to keep more than one species of roach together, make sure there are extra hiding places and I would recommend a large and very small species. From what I've heard, you can keep a large Blaberus or Gromphadorhina sp. together with something very small like the little Kenyan roach and they'll do just fine as long as there are little nooks and crannies for the little roaches to hide in.

Tenebrionids are by far the best communal species. You can keep a bunch of one species or several species all mixed together without any problems. I have a big setup for some large Eleodes sp. and they've all been doing great (I am looking to sell though...hint hint ). I have a separate tenebrionid setup that has Asbolus verrucosus, Cryptoglossa variolosa, and Phloeodes diabolicus. There used to be a couple other sp. of Eleodes in there, but they got old and died. You can keep velvet ants with tenebrionids without any problems.

Some people have had success with ghost mantids being kept communally, but I would be a little more cautious with those since mantids have no problem with cannibalism.

Carabids can be kept communally for the most part, especially the species we have here in Illinois. Breeding can be tricky though.

Most aquatic beetles can be kept together. Belostomatids will eat each other in a heartbeat.

Phasmids do well communally, but they are hard to acquire.

Don't mean to skew this topic in different direction, but I'm guessing you're hoping to have the species breed while they are in the communal? If so, how exactly would you go about breeding velvet ants? I'm quite curious on this as they are (from what I read) parasitic to a certain wasp sp. (Hymenoptera)?

Thanks.

The BFD beetles and velvet ants are what immediately came to mind when I saw the title, haha. They're apparently pretty entertaining, but you won't be able to get either of them to breed. Nobody has been able to figure out how to get the beetle larva to pupate in captivity and I think the wasps need a specific kind of host?

Millipedes and roaches are supposed to be able to cohabitate but I don't have any personal experience with that.

Pampho85 said:

Don't mean to skew this topic in different direction, but I'm guessing you're hoping to have the species breed while they are in the communal? If so, how exactly would you go about breeding velvet ants? I'm quite curious on this as they are (from what I read) parasitic to a certain wasp sp. (Hymenoptera)?

Thanks.

Click to expand...

Breeding is nice for most species, but some are much more difficult than others (as raisinjelly mentioned with the A. verrucosus). They parasitize bumble bees if I remember correctly, so you won't be able to breed them unless you want to keep a bumble bee colony as well.

Bess beetles, millipedes, woodlice, raoches, and a few other detritivores can cohab without much issue. I know carolina biology sells kits already setup with a decaying log for this exact purpose, and those are all kinds of animals that aren't too hard to find.

If you wanna do some serious breeding instead of just putting together stuff which don't kill each other, a leaf litter-rotten wood set up is a good start. You can easily keep multiple leaf litter dwellers and have them all breeding well, such as roaches, isopods and springtails. If you have a healthy colony of springtails you may even try to add some miniature predators like pseudoscorpion.