Description

The cactus longhorn beetle is a specialist feeder on cholla and prickly pear pads. You can purchase the pads at local Mexican grocery stores and some grocery stores. They are also rather affordable on Ebay, Etsy and probably Amazon. They can be stored in the freezer for many weeks and you just cut a little piece off for the beetles or just set an entire pad in the tank. The larvae eat pieces of the pads too.

Available unsexed only, sorry. Limit 6 per customer. If you buy multiple specimens, we will send a mix of large and smaller ones. Usually, males are smaller. No requests for sexes. If you buy an odd number, you are likely to get more males than females because they are more common. If you buy an even number, we will send the same number of large ones and small ones, but please note that some males are larger than some females and so we aren’t making any guarantees on sexes, sorry.

This listing is for adult beetles in the genus Moneilema. See photos at link below. The specimens are sold unsexed, and so you should get multiples if you want a chance at reproducing them. The video below shows how easy it is to get them to deposit eggs in a sand-based substrate. Both larvae and adults eat the same prickly pear pads. The specimens like to have something on top of the substrate like cholla wood (sold separately) to help them more easily traverse loose sand.

Here is a video from my YouTube Channel. The tank of course does not need to be this elaborate.