It only took me 3 weeks to name him. Lol Hey @jajeanpierre, kaliko sends his regards!
Thanks! He sure is. Pushing towards 5 months. I think with his gene pool he's going to turn out with alot of high red. But only time will tell!Wow look at all that color! Congrats on your new boy. He's going to be gorgeous
Thanks! Not at the moment. I actually just set this one up a few weeks ago. I haven't bothered taking any pictures of it. Been letting him settle in for the most part. I will on Saturday and post them for you! I'm out of town right now.
Yeah he does. He'll be a stunner. He's about ready to shed. It's almost hard to find an ugly panther. Or any ugly chameleon for that matter. Each one has its own, prehistoric look.
Definitely. He's got alot of reds when he's in resting colors. Unfortunately my new phone has a terrible camera.
For sure. Once they're about 5-6 months old, I usually switch up to medium/large crickets.He's still got a long ways to go!
One ooth is all you really need because their are so many mantids that pop out of just one that you probably won't want to take care of them all...
I have some Chinese mantids that @Nicholasdeaan gave me when his ooths hatched a couple months ago because he had hundreds, and that was way too many to take care of. I'm keeping mine alive until they are full sized, mature adults though instead of feeding them off as juveniles like he did. They aren't SUPER hard to take care of..... as long as you understand them.
They have to be in separate enclosures or else they will start to kill each other. I had all mine kept together for about a month because I didn't have anything else to put them in at the time.... I noticed that after they were a few weeks old, some were starting to lose limbs - a leg or two - and then one day I noticed I was 1 mantis short. Then a few days later... I lost another one. And it happened again.... and again.... They were eating each other because they had no other food with them. Nick experienced the same thing when he had hundreds all housed in a huge storage tote.... they just became cannibals. So when I started to lose them, I got more containers and separated them all into different ones so they can't hurt each other. I even kept a couple surviving fighters that were missing a leg, because they can grow them back after they molt another time or two, and they were of decent size that I wanted to give them a chance to grow more. So, housing them all separate when they start to kill each other is rule number 1. Some people use this as a slight advantage to thin out the numbers before they separate the ones they want to keep into individual containers. Letting them kill and eat each other is like feeding them free.
Rule number 2.... these things eat, ALOT. That's the reason they typically start to kill each other when they are housed together; they run out of food and they are all competing to eat it. I was feeding them Drosophila melanogaster fruit flies to start their life out, and I was feeding them daily - pouring about 50 flies into their container every day (there were about 15 or so mantids in the container at the start). I hardly ever found a fruit fly left in the container the next day. When my fruit fly culture was running low, I started to try rationing the remaining flies while I got another fruit fly culture started with Drosophila hydei. When I was being skimpy on the remaining food, that's when they started really killing each other and that's when I had to get them into separate containers. I was left with 9 mantids to raise out of the 15 or so I started with. Then I ran out of flies altogether a few days after I housed them all separately.... so they went without food for about 4 days or so..... then.... my new fruit fly culture had its first batch hatch last week.
Now they are all on Drosophila hydei fruit flies which are slightly bigger than the Melanogaster fruit flies. I feed these to them daily. I have 3 mantids of the 9 that are big enough that I feed them baby ants that I find in the yard, and they eat them every time. I've fed them baby crickets once and they ate those as well, but it's not worth my time to buy mini crickets so I just find free food in the yard for them. I also have a 4th mantis that has eaten a baby ant a couple of times, but it still hasn't moved up to that level officially so I stick with the Hydei fruit flies on that one still for now.
The thing about mantids is that you will feed them lots of different food throughout their life. They start on the Melanogaster fruit flies and the Hydei fruit flies.... then they can move up to things such as small ants and small crickets, then move up to bigger ants or Houseflies . Then when they are through with eating those, you can move up to bigger things such as bigger Blue Bottle flies, small moths such as the wax moth.... then as they grow you can offer them bigger crickets. Maybe some smaller Dubia. Then when they get bigger.... offer bigger Dubia or bigger insects.... you get the picture. The way you will know if the food you are offering is too big or too small is easy; if the food is too small, then the mantis won't be able to catch it because the small prey will escape from the mantis' bigger claws. If the food item you are offering is too large, then the mantis will grab onto it and let go because it is too big to hold onto, or the mantis won't even attack it at all. All mantids are known to attack prey twice their size or more, but you should always offer an insect that is of proper size in proportion to your mantis. When the mantis is big enough to eat bigger pretty, you can dust the prey item with bee pollen or something healthy if you would like, to boost the overall nutritional value of the mantis. You can also gutload the insects prior to feeding them to the mantis if you are able to do so.
Each mantis has a different life cycle, but as for the Chinese mantis.... it will take about 6 months to reach adult size, and then it will live around another 6 months as a mature adult. This is the most popular kind of mantis to use as a feeder as they are non-invasive and relatively cheap to obtain. Each "instar", or molt, they will grow in size and can eat a slightly larger feeder. Most mantids of any species reach adult size at around the 7th or 8th instar. The humidity is important with mantids as well so that they molt properly. If the humidity is too low, then they can sometimes get stuck inside of a molt and lose limbs or even die. If the humidity is too high, then it can cause the molt to not come off properly as well, and can also cause mold or respiratory issues for the mantis. If you live in a really dry area, lightly spray their enclosure with water once a day. If you live where there is lots of humidity, then spray the enclosure every 2-3 days. Be careful as to not soak it. A little is just fine. If your mantis stops eating, there’s a good chance it’s going to molt in the next couple of days. When this happens, remove any remaining prey from the tank, and leave it completely alone. They really should not be disturbed during molting. Also, don’t feed your mantis or spray the mantis directly for a day or so after molting because their bodies are so soft and fragile at this time. If you disturb them at all and they fall during a molt, there is a very good chance it will lose limbs or die as well. Mantids mainly drink from water droplets on leaves or the sides of the containers you house them in, which is one of the reasons humidity should be kept high and regular misting is necessary. A small, shallow water bowl can also be provided. This must be sufficiently shallow to prevent your mantis from drowning, and some individuals won’t use it anyway. Humidity levels around 60% are ideal for a Chinese mantis, and those levels can vary depending on the type of mantis you are getting, as each species requires slightly different environments. Most mantids survive fine humidity levels between in temperatures between 65-100°F, but 75-80°F is the ideal temp you want to shoot for.
Other than that info.... they are pretty easy to care for. Just keep them in a nice clean environment, removing dead insects as needed, and wiping the container out once a week or so. They are definitely a little time consuming, and some people say they are counter productive because you are using insects, to feed an insect, which in turn gets fed to the chameleon. You spend all this time raising a mantis (or two or three or four or....) on different insects for months, all to have your chameleon swallow it up in 30 seconds.
It adds variety though. I didn't originally plan to do this, but as I said, @Nicholasdeaan just had soooo many that he had no idea what to do with them. So he gave me a handful, which I accidentally housed improperly and killed every one of them because I didn't expect to get any and had done no reading so I was clueless as to how to care for them. Then I did lots of research on them, and asked my buddy Nick for some more - and he still had hundreds - so he hooked me up again with around 15 of them, and I kept them till they started to kill one another, which brought the number down to 9 for me. A bit of a pain in the butt to keep them fed and sprayed and whatnot.... but honestly, I've wanted an Orchid Mantis or a Devil's Flower Mantis as a pet for a while now too... and I figured that raising a few mantids as feeders will give me a bit of experience now, so that way I don't end up killing a pricey, exotic mantis in the future.
Sorry for the long message.... just wanted to give you some info. I'm sure Nick is hastily trying to find me a publisher for my novel here
But back to the original topic...
KALIKO is lookin pretty neat there Nick. Lovin the colors that he is showing. He is such a cute little bugger.
