Please help, something terribly wrong with chrysalises

[Gwynne]

I am sorry for the length of this but wanted to mention anything pertinent. I need help!

I managed to successfully raise five beautiful butterflies over a month ago. I found them in later instars, no one had predatorized them, they had no diseases that I know of. I think everyone who was on the forum at the time remembers how anxious I was waiting for them to emerge and wondering if they would know how to fly on their own. Like nature wouldnt have equipped them with that knowledge!

Then I tried raising eggs and the first batch ending up all dying, probably because I left them on moist towels too long.

I decided to try again and ended up with nine healthy looking, huge caterpillars. One pupated on July 26th and the others on July 27th. I raised six in the aquairum and three in the hermit crab cage. As I started getting more caterpillars, I had to put the nine together.

They were the biggest, fattest caterpillars I had ever seen. I thought they would never stop eating and pupate. When the six were younger, there were two with them that didnt make it. They didnt turn black or look like pictures I have seen of caterpillars with horrible diseases, they just died. Since you have to expect some loss I wasnt too alarmed, just sad. Still, I sterilized the aquarium before I put everyone back in. They grew bigger, I added the three more, and everyone pupated.

When I came home on the 27th, things didnt look good. Most of the caterpillars had not shed their face parts.

1. Is there any correlations between the face part not falling on the ground and disease?

One caterpillar had a complete chrysalis but I thought that only 2/3 of the caterpillar was inside the chrysalis.

2. Is it possible to have a complete chrysalis but the whole caterpillar didnt make it inside?

Fearing he might be diseased, I tried to move him and ending up dropping him and killing him. This was during the discussion of wasp, earwigs and other predators and I was very paranoid. I decided to look closer at him. What I thought was not a fully formed chyrsalis turned out to be a caterpillar with a lot more excess skin than I had ever seen. I beat myself up all night over having killed him accidentally.

I have five more pupate in the hermit crab cage and they didnt shed their face parts either.

3. Does any one know what that face part is called? I thought it was a face mask, but maybe I am thinking of hockey!

I bought the Live Monarch Castle which is huge. I had to put the aquarium with the chrysalises behind it so that the chrysalises would still get light from the light over my kitchen sink. It was hard for me to see what was going on with them. I did move the castle on Tuesday night. It was the first time I had gotten to see up close what was going on with the chrysalises since Saturday or Sunday. I had looked over to see if everyone was going okay, but not up closely. I can not remember if I saw something that didnt look right or just wanted a closer look, but I moved the aquarium so I could see exactly what was going on. One chrysalis had two brown spots near the top, like a grape going bad. I also saw one that looked like it had a piece taken out of it. It is hard to describe but it looked liked a shallow dent. That section looked a little white yesterday. Also there were some dots near his stem. I forget now what color they are.

Yesterday I decided to remove the obviously diseased chrysalis and put it by itself and take a look at everyone else. I did manage to get the chrysalis down without dropped it, this time. I tried taking pictures but the light was reflecting off the lid I taped it on and nothing came out.

I inspected the other chrysalises last night and this morning. I am afraid I am going to lose at least half of them if not more. I can not tell if they have white running through the chrysalises in an abnormal fashion of if this is just the butterflies ready to come out shortly.

Even though I had five healthy chrysalises that was a month ago and I can not remember exactly what they looked like every day. Also, three of them were mostly obscurred because of where they pupated so I couldnt really study them. This is my first time really being able to look closely.

There is no doubt in my mind the one that turned brown is heavily diseased! I couldnt stand to flush him so he has his own container.

4. Does anyone know what I am dealing with? Could it be stress related? Theirs, not mine!

Seven of these caterpillars made chrysalises practically on top of each other. They had a whole tank screen to spread out in yet they all congregated on top of each other except for the one that looks like he has a dent. There was a bit of fighting when some where in J positions and others got too close. I can not remember if these are the ones that look funny or not.

5. Could this be air borne?

I have the aquarium right behind the monarch castle. I am afarid that these caterpillars might get sick just by breathing in the same air. There is nothing I can do at this point, no room anyplace else for the aquarium and I feel whatever damage is done probably has been already. I had three in the castle pupate already and one didnt drop his face mask, one did, and one did partly and it stuck to his chrysalis but I removed it. I did removed the face masks from the other guys in the aquarium. I did not wait 24 hours since I was in there removing the one that looked like it hadnt shed fully and decided to remove all the face masks at once. I used tweezers. I guess I could have spread something then, but I made sure to do that before touching the one that hadnt shed fully.

I am about ready to quit. I just ordered two more castles yesterday but I am afraid all my chrysalies are going to be deformed. The ones in the hermit crab cage look beautiful, but the ones in the aquarium didnt start to go bad till halfway through. And the caterpillars in the monarch castle were not that large when they pupated.

If anyone could help me figure out what is going on, I would appreciated it. And if you could let me know if this is fixable or not too! Again, sorry for the length of this post but I didnt want to leave out details that might be important.

[tzuhouse]

Hi. I'll start by saying that I'm brand new to the forum and I'm definitely no expert. I have been raising Monarchs for 3 years, now.

The first year, we had some success, but we had many deaths. I would bring caterpillars in, as soon as I saw them. One problem may have been that the place I was purchasing my plants from may have used pesticides. Also, some were probably parasitized.

The next year, I began bringing them in as eggs, preferably as soon as they'd been layed. If I see a butterfly ovipositing in the backyard, I go bring that part of the leaf in, immediately. I also would spray my Monarch eggs with the disinfectant Live Monarch sells. I had much more success that year.

This last year I haven't had much in the way of Monarchs. I've wondered if the hurricanes didn't effect their course a little. I had stopped using the disinfectant, as I don't know if it can go bad. I used it a few times at the beginning of the year and some cats didn't survive. May have nothing to do with that, but I didn't want to risk it.

So, what I can recommend is make sure that your plants are completely clean of anything that might be killing the cats. This includes any spraying that might be happening for mosquitoes and such. Protect them as much as you can. And, bring in those eggs, ASAP. If I'm right there to take an egg, the minute it's on the leaf, there isn't time for it to become parasitized. See if you have better success by raising from egg. I have 8 right now that should be emerging tomorrow. Then the fun will begin again. I also have 2 Pipevine Swallowtail and 8 Black Swallowtail chrysalids that seem to be in diapause. It's been 2 months for the Pipevines and 4 for the Blacks, but I've been told they can be dormant for an entire year, so maybe they'll emerge next year.

Oh, and I did have one Black Swallowtail and one Monarch this year that both began to pupate and died in that inbetween stage. The Monarch split the skin halfway up and stopped, so the skin was still there and visible and the bottom part was the green of the chrysalis. Sad, but very timely, as I was teaching a class to some second graders the next day. That had never happened before, so it was great, if it had to happen, it did it and I used it for education.

If you want to see how we started with butterflies, you can check out my website at www.pumpkinsandpets.com It's a mess right now, as my friend is redoing it for me, but she had a baby, so it's on hold. Just scroll to the bottom and click on the butterfly link. Lots of pictures.

TTYL and good luck!
Mary

[Gwynne]

I want to thank you for taking time to answer my questions. Today I see that several more chrysalises have gone bad. Out of eight, only three look normal. These ones I did not raise as eggs but as one to three day old caterpillars. I have been raising a lot from eggs.

I do have six chrysalises that I think were from eggs and they currently look beautiful. However, these didnt start to go bad till two days ago and more went bad today so I dont know if the ones from eggs will be okay or not as they are several days behind.

This is a big disappointment as I spent hours taking care of them. Thank you for your response.

[tzuhouse]

I understand your frustration. If you feel it's that certain fly that has parasitized them, put the chrysalids into a container with a lid and see what happens. I have had a few that I found dead flies in the containers, later. Most though, haven't. I don't know what was wrong with them.

Mary

[Gwynne]

I dont know what happened. I do know that I had tried the milkweed tree method of feeding the butterflies for the first time. That is, instead of giving them individual leaves I left them on the vine and put them in water so they wouldnt dry out.

One caterpillar started J hooking and someone else was chewing his leaf. I had to leave the pupating caterpillar outside the aquarium for a day, till everyone else pupated. Now this was indoors and other than a horsefly that I saw a week later and gnats and little weevil beetles, I havent seen any other insects inside.

And if a wasp did get to the one who I left outside the aquarium, I dont know if he could have infected other ones before emerging. At this point, only three of the eight look healthy. The sickest one I have by himself. The one who got the spots first is not the one who pupated first, but now he looks bad too.