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Eleodes osculans

Eleodes osculans
Orange County, California, USA
Several of these have recently appeared in a container housing these 2 and this. I am thinking they are the former (osculans), but not sure how to distinguish them.

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Eleodes osculans Eleodes osculans

Moved, all larvae from the enclosure were sent to me...
Every one of them has matured into E.osculans. :)

Moved from Desert Stink Beetles.

 
sweet!
How many adults did you end up with? How are the ones from the second batch doing?

 
I didn't get a full count...
Over 20 for sure though, literally all of them pupated at the same time! :)

The other Eleodes larvae are doing good, and are quite large now, I'm guessing I'll have some pupating before this month is over, we'll see! :)

 
Conditions
What is your setup like? I'm interested in breeding these. I just got 6 of them 😁

 
My blog...
I was very successful breeding mine, you should be able to find all my notes on rearing this species on my blog here. Be sure to click on the Eleodes osculans tag at the bottom of the post.

 
Helpful
Thank you!

 
No problem!!
Happy to help! :)

No way to distinguish them until they get older...
If they are acuticaudus, they'll eventually grow to be a lot larger than the E.osculans, and if they are osculans, they'll stop growing much quicker than those of acuticaudus.

If you don't want to do the work of rearing them you could always send them my way.. ;p

 
I might take you up on that offer...
At least two of them are only slightly shorter than the length of the osculans already. I'd like to try to get at least one or two to adulthood myself. Any tips for rearing?

Once classes start up again in the fall I'll have less time for bug rearing (and I want to concentrate on keeping my orthopterans alive), so I might take you up on that offer. Are these species you're looking for?

 
Typically Eleodes larvae get a few mm longer than their parents
They will get a LOT longer than the osculans if they are acuticaudus though. Of course, you could have larvae from both species, lol!

Keep them in coconut fiber/sand/potting soil or whatever, feed them dog/cat food, carrots, and dead leaves, (not 100% necessary, but they like them), and keep one side of their enclosure moist and one side dry. When they get big enough and stop growing or try making pupal cells, separate them and put them in small deli cups with an inch or more of moist, compressed substrate, and they should burrow down and construct pupal cells. Once they turn into pupae, I'd recommend gently moving out of their pupal cells and placing them on top of the substrate, which you should flatten and smooth out.

Once it ecloses into an adult and darkens a bit after a few hours, quickly and gently move it to a dry, well ventilated deli cup and let it harden up over the course of a week or two. You can feed it and lightly mist one small area of the deli cup, but make sure not to make things too humid, as they are very sensitive to high humidity levels and will quickly die if kept too humid. Once it hardens up, you can then move it to a larger enclosure and treat it normally like it's parents.

I'm basically interested in keeping any species I haven't bred before! ;) And I haven't bred osculans or acuticaudus.

Moved