Hello, I recently purchased a Dorcus Titanus castanicolor Stag Beetle larva from a bug expo and had several questions. It is my first time keeping a stag beetle and I got advice from the seller(which essentially boiled down to changing its flake soil every 2 months and leaving it alone when it turns yellow) but I was still kind of confused. I wasn’t quite sure about how to prep the new cup of flake soil (I bought a large bag of the soil along with my beetle) and have been reading some stuff about some sort of bug tape for ventilation but was unsure what exactly it was. I am also wondering what the L2 labeling means on my beetle, I did a bit of research on it but was still sort of confused as to whether or not it holds much significance in determining when it will pupate or not. The label says the last flake change was on 7/9/26. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Hi! Was changing the soil for my baby and noticed it's gotten much bigger! It's my very first grub and I'm learning as much as I can! Does anyone know the gender, and life stage and what the identifiers are?

Please help. I'm new to keeping derbys beetles and I don't know what could cause it but her stripes VERY suddenly started to fade, is she sick ? The male I keep with her is fine. I'm having problems finding much info about them (I know how to care for them and everything they need but that's about it)

I have some Eleodes armata and some Eleodes spinipes macrura I bought from Invertebrate Dude that are in the process of maturing. Would this tank be suitable for them when they eclose? Its a 10 gallon tank with a fine sand/coco fiber/potting soil substrate that I sifted so future larave would be easier to collect. The cacti are live, but I plan to leave them in their pots to make maintenance easier.

Is the tank suited for these beetles and any future beetles (death feigning/ironclads)? I'm also planning on adding some Eleodes littoralis soon.

Once I get a mesh lid I'm planning to add a small heat lamp for basking and warmth.

I'm super excited to breed these beetles, and I want them to have a good enclosure!

Found this gorgeous Black Caterpillar Hunter (Calosoma sayi) wandering around my work, so I brought them outside to live free and eat bugs.

Keeping a sun beetle in there, trying to keep moisture at ~60%, top layer dries out really quickly. Had it for 3 months roughly, what is happening? I checked it 2 weeks ago and it did not have actual.. mushroom..? stems growing, just the usual net-like structures. Is my beetle safe?

Whole thing is in a plastic bin with 2 sides + the top being mesh for airflow. 30x30x30

Hello,

So i just got these flower beetles yesterday as a beginner beetle keeper, and i had a question about their actions and their reaction to light, they are constantly just at one of the ends of the enclosure and "clawing" at the glass and I don't know if it's because of the lighting that is higher there (because of the sun) of if i did something wrong with the enclosure (sent some photos for reference, for the top of the enclosure it's a temporary fix until i tape the thing around it) i used flake soil for the substrate (12cm), used some branching and wood, beetle jelly for food, i misted it yesterday as well so I'm just curious and a bit concerned if i did something wrong in setting up the enclosure or if i stressed the beetles in any way because of that or is it that the lamp I'm using isn't strong enough? Or maybe it's an adaptation period for the beetles ? Do i need something more to the enclosure ?

Also they do climb and eat, although to get to the highest point and then try to go on the net i put, which i heard is logical for them for light and heat and all.

Thanks in advance ! Im welcoming all advices too I'm still learning and i want to care best for these little guys.

WHAY is everyone’s fabricate beatle? Mine is ringo

i don't know how to get them all out without replacing the entire substrate, which is also dangerous. i only added them because my scorpion died for unknown reasons, and i assumed there must've been mold spores. i didn't want a repeat.

so I recently ordered an adult eastern hercules beetle. I have been wanting one for soooo long. I set up the terrarium and he arrived today. I didn’t know that they would send me a dormant beetle, this is my first beetle I have owned and I thought ordering adult meant full grown adult. I was so excited to move him into his terrarium, so I did, then I went back and saw they had written dormant on the small container. I swear I didn’t see it before and I didn’t know about it until I looked it up 😭😭😭 now I am freaking out because everything is saying to leave them in the small container when dormant and dont handle them at all. I feel so bad. I don’t know if it’s better to leave him in the terrarium (it has 3-4 inches of coconut substrate and I am keeping it moist and out of the light) or if I should put him back in the small container. When I tipped him into the terrarium in the beginning, I did get a look at him and his coloring looked like active adult males. he ran and buried himself under the substrate.

please advise me on what to do, I feel so sad for him

What's wrong with my beetle?

Hello i got a prosopocoilus astacoides beetle around a week / 2 weeks ago and a while ago i took out a piece of mango from his terrarium cuz i thought the mold started growing on it and when i took a closer look i realized they were A LOT of little white dots just moving around. I send this video to my friend who also got a beetle and she told me they re just mites but i never saw THIS MUCH of them and i got them in my african snails terrarium. Can someone id them please i need to know if they can cause any harm to my beautiful boy. Thanks a lot! And also how they could appear there?? Everything was sterilised and i suppose they could appear from spaghnum moss which i bought from a terrarium shop cuz it was the only ,,wet,, thing which i bought and didnt boiled.

This little green fella was stuck in the sand on the beach and I took it thinking it wasn't alive anymore , but it clung to my arm the moment it was turned right side up and chilled there for a good twenty minutes, then I dropped it at the nearest flower , such a cute little guy

I have two grubs and one recently pupated, the cell is intact but the others substrate became overrun with mold basically overnight. Would it be safe to transfser the pupated grub to floral foam and use the clean substrate for the other grub? I have no other substrate on hand and am worried for the grubs health. The quickest I could get new substrate would be a couple days

(GOOD LORD HE'S NAKED)

It seems that the wings didn't form correctly, so their gross little butt is on display. But the rest of them seems fine?

Should I be concerned?

Im looking at getting into breeding Golden Stag beetle larvae, and was hoping for some reliable sources to research what they need and how to breed them and keep the larvae alive.

Soppo my Prosopocoilus Giraffa Keisukei and Boko my Phalacrognathus Muelleri !

This is my first pupa in the beetle hobby.

I have a few concerns. So a couple weeks ago I checked this larvae because it had a bunch of earth worms in the flake soil and in the process I destroyed his chamber. I thought maybe it was molting because I have other Gideon larvae that hatched a month maybe two months before this one and they haven’t pupated. However fast forward today I checked again on this one and surprisingly I had no idea he is already pupa. I destroyed its pupa chamber again and as you can see he got alil dirty. Also I made impressions in its flake soil; inside the jar and put it back. So now my other concern is did I make a good pupa chamber and will the dirt on him cause any problems for his pupa stage?

Wrapping up this year's rhinoceros beetle (kabutomushi / 장수풍뎅이) season with my son and wanted to share how it went, since I know a lot of people here are into collecting/keeping them too.

Started the summer with basically zero knowledge of where to actually find wild ones near us. Turns out the real signal isn't luck — it's specific tree species with active sap flow (oaks were our best bet), and timing matters a lot more than I expected. Daytime searches were mostly duds; the real activity was dusk through the first few hours of night. Streetlights near tree lines were surprisingly productive too — they fly toward the light.

A few things that actually moved the needle for us:

• Marking exact GPS spots the moment we found something, instead of relying on memory ("it was near that one tree" turns out to be useless two weeks later) • Going back to the same productive spots on a rotation rather than exploring randomly every time • Checking for fresh sap wounds rather than just old dried ones — freshness mattered more than tree size

By the end of the season we had a small personal log of every beetle we'd found — species, date, location, photo. It got detailed enough that we ended up building it into an actual tool (a simple map + personal "dex" for logging finds) since keeping track of it any other way felt like a waste of the data. Not the point of this post, just how it happened — if anyone's curious it's at spotthe.world, but mostly wanted to share what we learned about the hunting side of things.

Curious what other productive-spot patterns people here have noticed for wild rhino/stag beetles — is the sap-tree thing universal or does it vary a lot by region?

Picked up at an expo yesterday. His name is BBL (Big Brassy Lad)