In the early period of my rearing career , i reared many species at room temperature , such as Dynastes hercules lichyi , Dorcus titanus palawanicus ....... etc .
Some rearing results were shown as below :
Dynastes hercules lichyi :
2006-5-9 , when i was an undergraduate , my friend gave me 2 L1 D. h. l. larvae whose father was a 150 mm wild
individual .
At that time , i did not have my own refrigerator , so i reared the larvae at room temperature .
Their mainly food was high decayed wood flakes , in order to ensure the ventilation of the two containers , i only added little water to wet the substrate , i didn't hope to see water drop stuffing ventilation holes on the lids .
2007-2-24 , i weighed the L3 male larva , the weight was 105.4 grams .
2007-6-3 , the weight was 134.4 grams .
2007-12-28 , the weight achieved up to 138.3 grams , at that moment , his color was yellow , so i decided to leave him alone after changing the substrate .
2008-3-15 , the male larva had pupated , but his thoracic horn was bent seriously , that might be caused by the small pupal cell , i could see compressed traces on the base of his thoracic horn .
Finally , he hatched on April 5th 2008 .
Dorcus titanus palawanicus :
I reared D. t. p. larvae in 2005 and 2006 .
Kinshi bottles were the food which i used to feed the larvae , the capacity of the bottles is around 1100 c. c. , moreover , i also bought some special covers to replace the original cotton balls which were used to stuff the bottle mouth of the kinshi bottle , i worried about that the cotton balls would absorb damp and made the larvae hard breathe .
The larvae were full-grown in March 2006 .
The imagines emerged in May 2006 .
Comparing to the specimens which recorded on the magazines , i found that my male imagines had shorter mandibles even if their bodies were as big as the specimens .
I had ever read that using different rearing ways will yield some variations on the appearances of captive individuals , in the article , the experiment was accomplished by rearing Dorcus hopei binodulosus larvae , the author thought that the rearing temperature would affect pupae developing , lower rearing temperature helped pupal mandibles to develop the length .
I did not know that the theory was or not applied to other species , but i recognized that lower rearing temperature was good for larvae to grow , after all , most of stag beetles grow in the mountain .
Megasoma pachecoi :
I bought 4 L3 M. p. larvae from the internet in July 2007 .
In Taiwan , M. p. had been imported in the years before 2007 , some hobbyists began to sell M. p. larvae in 2007 , so i seized the chance to buy the larvae .
At that time , i didn't know how to care for the larvae , hence , i treated them like Allomyrina dichotoma larvae .
2007-9-27 , the larvae weight was 20 grams , 18.7 grams , 15.3 grams and 15.4 grams , they were 2 males and 2 females .
2007-12-16 , i found that the male larvae had pupated .
2008-1-2 , the pupae turned into the imagines , the female adults emerged earlier than the males , but i have forgot the date .
I set up a breeding container on August 11th 2008 , the oviposition medium was humus , i compressed the bottom layer of the container , the depth of the layer was at least 5 cm .
2008-8-30 , i set up the second breeding container .
2008-9-4 , i saw L1 larvae at the bottom of the first container .
2008-9-14 , i started to retrieve the larvae , finally , i got 45 L1 larvae and 1 egg .
I found that M. p. eggs only needed 2 weeks to hatch , so i decided to excavate the second container on the same day , eventually , i got 34 eggs .
The velocity of the embryo development was not synchronous , because the laying order was different , the eggs were pale red in color when they were close to hatch , i did not know that the color was or not caused by the substrate .
2008-9-20 , i retrieved the larvae again from the second container and end up with 8 eggs .
Counting it all up , there were 45 L1 larvae and 42 eggs .
The hatching rate of the eggs was high , if the environment was okay , the hatching rate might reach 100 % .
I chose some larvae to raise , the spare larvae were given away to my friend .
I put them together and fed them on fermented decayed wood flakes .
Those larvae started to pupate in June 2009 .
2009-7-18 , i saw some new adults in the container , so i excavated the container and gained 5 male adults , 7 female adults and 2 male pupae , one of the male pupae pupated directly on the substrate surface , i thought that he might lack for space to construct his pupal cell .
Related pictures :
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| D. h. l. L3 male larva , 2007-9-27 |
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| D. h. l. male pupa , 2008-3-30 |
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| D. h. l. male adult |
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| The same individual |
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| D. t. p. male pupa |
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| The mandibles of the individual were short |
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| M. p. pre-pupae |
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| M. p. male pupa |
