mantis update

if any of you viewed my last mantis thread, you may remember that i had two chinese ooth, including one of unknown viability that had gotten wet. the first one hatched out fine. a week later, the second one from the same source had still not hatched out, so it was presumed non-viable. needed my 10 g for ffs, so relocated the mantis and took out the second ooth, of course got distracted, and forgot about the second ooth, that is until i woke up the next morning and had mantis all over my bedroom. had about 200 altogether (from both clutches) but havent yet seperated them so am down to about a hundred. they are all doing well and the larger ones are now well over an inch. actually the first pic is upside down for easier viewing,(they are actually hanging upside down). everyone is getting along nicely, but confrontation is frequent and attacks do occasionaly occur. i have only witnesed 2 but there are at least a couple of dozen dead mantis carcass on the floor. you may notice in the second pic that it is bending over to drink. in the third pic it seems as though the one is contemplating a little neighborly love, and by that i mean instantly decapitating the smaller one, eating its head, and discarding the remainder of its body on the floor of the cage. i will probably only feed a few of these , weeks worth of work, that could all be consumed in a matter of minutes ? i suppose i could grow them all to substatial feeders size , which would be the way to go, but, that would be a whole lot of work, feeding and watering all of the different containers. right now there are two distinct size groups, in a week, there will only be one, eventually the females will start to outgrow the males and there will again be two different size groups. soon i will divi into several containers. one more week and they will easily be at housefly stage. a week later, it will be bbfs (SWEET), not the most efficient way to raise feeders, but everyone should give them a try just for the fun of it. these are the mantis that were hatched 4-25-10 and previously posted here https://www.chameleonforums.com/suprize-chinese-mantis-hatch-40351/ mantis are fascinating creatures, like little terminator robots. jmo

This is awesome!!! Thanks for the update!

Congrats! You're lucky that you are allowed to raise them in your state. I kept Orchid and cryptic mantis a few years back until I found out that you can't have them in FL. Good luck with them, Chinese are one of my favorites.

Congrats, it looks like you're doing much better than I did. I also have 2 ooths (the religosa species), and it looks like I have 2 mantids total, so I'm 2 for 2 I guess! Uh, yeah right. The first ooth to hatch didn't yield very many and I have one nice mantis from this one and it's eating small crix already. From the second ooth I had quite a few, but it looks like I have only one survivor there too. I'm not sure what happened, but I think I didn't keep them watered sufficiently. Maybe I should try the chinese mantids next.

Ive got some mantis that hatched out about 10 days ago myself. But Ive lost alot of them. I think my temps are too high since i keep them in the garage. I see lots of dead carcasses on the floor of the containers. I seperated mine into two different containers and have about 50-75 left. I think i had close to 300 hatch out.

higher temps can be really devstating to younger mantis, especially if they cant escape the heat, or there is circulation issues. my cage has a daytime temp gradient from 70*-78*. the higher the heat, the more water they will need, but the faster they will grow. i water mine about 3x a day and every time i do they are thirsty. the older and more crowded they are the more likely canabalism will occur. the availability of food also plays a role, i dump in at least a hundred hydei about 2-3x a day. if i was serious about keeping them all alive, i would have seperated them into solo containers by now, but that would be a huge amount of work. my goal is to end up with a half dozen pairs of adult mantis, for further breeding attempts. i do it for the novelty of it, but i think some body would really have to have their act together to efficiently raise them as feeders. it takes about a month before there is any real substance to them, by that time most are gone, unless you have really had your act together. jmo

not another mantis update?

this is from the same batch hatched earlier in this thread (4-25-10), now about 2-1/4" notice pic 4, about to go for the xanthoman taste test. they normaly wouldnt bite when handled carefully , but if you look at pic #4 closely, you will see that i am accidently pinching his leg. probably about 65 % grown , only have a dozen or so left , didn't separate early enough, too bad, just a little more effort and i could have had 50 that size (females are currently 2-1/4", males are at about 1-1/2")

So you raise food that will try to eat you? Those things are huge. I can not understand why anyone would go to all the trouble of raising mantis, they are cool but wayyyyyyyyy to much work for me. You sure are doing a nice job. What can you feed a 2" mantis to? I wouldn't let it near and of my children.

I can not understand why anyone would go to all the trouble of raising mantis, they are cool but wayyyyyyyyy to much work for me.

They are way cool. However out of all the feeders that I have fed to my chameleons nothing tops a mantis not even a giant grasshopper and nothing breaks a hunger strike like a mantis.

They are a ridiculous amount of work to raise especially all the babies from one egg case. I normally just have a established colony in the front and back yard (that feed on insects around garden plants like rose bushes) and collect them occasionally as feeders. Even though being a wild colony there is the risk of parasites.

i did feed a few, but i didnt really raise them as feeders. it wasnt much trouble to get a dozen to that size, i didnt separate until those photos were taken (mon the 7th) but you are right, raising an entire ooth to that size would be a monumental amount of work, even if you had your act together. i have said in several previous threads that (in feeder terms) raising mantis is just more work than it is worth. the one exception to that would be if a person knew when a clutch was due, having an ooth hatch at the same time would be a perfect starter food. newly hatched mantis are so fragile that even a tiny tiny cham, could take down newly hatched mantis. even large size ones are quite fragile, if it wasnt for their stealthiness, and their lightning fast ability to deliver a fatal blow, then they themselves would fall prey to much smaller insects. they are aware of their fragility. they would be all over a bbf but may pass over a spider the same size. the 2-1/4" females are now capable of taking down a full size crick but they know to do it from the top side of the crick so they dont get bitten. the have molted again since those photos and the females are now 2-1/2" havent really bothered to check, i have just assumed that the larger ones are females. now that they are separated, i will try to sex them tomorrow. if i can get them to last one more month, then they should be at least 3-1/2" actually hoping to get some ooth out of this crowd

Do they get their wings after their last molt?

radstusky said:

Congrats, it looks like you're doing much better than I did. I also have 2 ooths (the religosa species), Maybe I should try the chinese mantids next.

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Chinese would be much easier to raise than Religosa. A bigger meal for bigger chameleons, and faster growing too.

Motherload Chameleon said:

I can not understand why anyone would go to all the trouble of raising mantis, they are cool but wayyyyyyyyy to much work for me.

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Call me crazy Laurie,
I have been raising hundreds this year. I was only up til 11:00 last night feeding and watering them. Did'nt quite get to them all. I only need to see the look on one of the Parson's face, to make it all worth the work.

Call me crazy Laurie,
I have been raising hundreds this year. I was only up til 11:00 last night feeding and watering them. Did'nt quite get to them all. I only need to see the look on one of the Parson's face, to make it all worth the work.

That is called pure loyalty to your Parsons. Great job! With a normal 9 to 5 (if you work a 9 to 5) plus extra hours for chameleons don't let the whip cracking get you down though.

Mantids are awesome! I love them, and I've become crazed over them the past few months lol.

As far as feeders for chameleons, chinese would be the best choice. An ooth is 1-3 dollars, and each ooth hatches 150 on average.

Go to livemonarch.com and get those 1 ft. cubed net cages. Butterfly net cages are perfect for any mantis species. And the holes are small enough so not even D. Mel fruit flies can escape them!

I keep these species, ONLY as pets: Ghost, Acontista Multi-color, Idolomantis Diabolica, Thistle, D. Lobata, Violin, Purple Boxer, Texas Unicorn, #9 mantis, Omomantis Zebrata, and some unknown species I just got in the mail this week.

If one of my pet mantids mismolts, they're as good as dead 99% of the time. I don't see the point of killing them myself, so yes, one of my chameleons will eat em right up!

One of my chameleons has had some very expensive meals I must say... lol