December 12, 2021

 

First attempt at Strategus aloeus lifecycle

I’m a little embarrassed to include this experiment, because I made some rookie decisions and lost 8 larvae, then released 2 back to the garden bed that I found them in because they are native beneficial insects. 

Unfortunately I could not find any literature on Strategus aloeus husbandry. I had found them incidentally in my yard and thought to myself “hey, this thing is terrifying! I’ll see what it turns into!” After some lost sleep and a very detailed conversation about beetles from a man in the Philippines about native ranges of beetle species, we were able to identify my likely species. As larvae and adult they eat rotting vegetation. I collected them and their surrounding dirt to set up my first terrarium. 

At that point I didn’t have a glass tank, instead I had a hamster cage. I thought it would be perfect because it was roomy and about 6” deep with clear plastic walls and lots of ventilation on top. Eventually I found a free tank and moved them over, only to discover that 7 had disappeared. I was super bummed when I realized that they had most definitely died because their substrate wasn’t moist enough. I got advice from the internet to keep the 3 remaining larvae in separate containers with ventilation but not open so that they’d stay moist.

Here’s the 2nd terrarium setup, which lasted less than 24 hours once I got the advice to put the larvae into smaller containers. 

Well… I don’t have any pictures after that because I accidentally drowned my absolute favorite of the bunch, Lila The Destroyer. It was such a feisty guy and I really cared about it. It’s really arid in my house and I was so worried that Lila would dry out and die that I overdid the water and the next day I realized that Lila was at the bottom of the glass instead of the topside where I normally saw him. I should have checked, and I didn’t, and he died. So I gave up and released the other two into my garden bed.