Macropanesthia Rhinoceros - Info + Questions!

[BoogleBug]

I have been saving up for a couple of these babies for a while now, and I finally am ready to commit to them - only one thing keeping me from getting them right now, and that is the topic of food. I've heard many different things... that they can ONLY eat dried eucalyptus leaves, that they don't need them at all, that they can DIE if they only eat (certain types of) dried eucalyptus, that they can live on a diet of oak leaves and the occasional eucalyptus leaves like you can buy for tea... but I really need a few more opinions here. Where could I buy food for them? What's the best substrate? What else would I need to make sure they lived happy, healthy lives? And if I do manage to be fortunate enough to wind up with a male/female... what should I do to make sure they're happy and healthy enough to want to breed in a couple more years when they mature?

Sorry for all the questions, I just can't seem to find any reliable thoughts or opinions on the matter. So thank you SO much for any help!!! These are at the very top of my invert want list and have been for a very long time. If only more people got into raising them, perhaps the prices for these lovelies would come down a bit and we'd have lots more of them around.

If it makes up for all the questions, here are some links I found that are rather informative on these beauties, as well as some other information I've gathered along the years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_burrowing_cockroach
http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTri...5588/roch.html

More facts:
- live-bearing
- live up to 10 years
-reach maturity in 3-4 years
- breed once a year and may have 5-30 young
- slow to breed, but require little maintenance
- do not climb glass
- native to Australia
- unable to flip itself over, much like a turtle
- world's heaviest species of roach
- shed 12-13 times before adulthood
- Males have a more concave, shovel-shaped dorsal shield (or pronotum) which covers the head and an extra segment at the hind end of the abdomen which can be seen from the underside.

Correct me if I'm wrong on any of this!

[Orin]

There's a good article 06' and follow-up article 08' in Invertebrates-Magazine. The update is available but it might be hard to track down the original article (though you can get a photo copy). There are a lot of myths since 99% of the advice you find online is from people who've never bred them and some who've never kept them. The molts to adulthood is 7-8 (not sure which). They'd be the size of a football if they molted 13 times.

[Orin]

I was wrong, apparently they molt 9 times. ACS Publication 1 Macropanesthia review includes a table of recorded molt dates.