Praying Mantids

[Lizardlover]

Went to the gardening store today because we are landscaping and guess what they had. Mantid egg cases, the lady said they are good natural pesticides when she saw i was interested, and i said "oh i was just gonna feed some to my chams" you shouldve seen her face.., anyways now i have an incubating oothica (sp) So i should have babies soon, now ill have to gutload the gutload for my feeder

 

[nick barta]

At 80 degrees or so, you will have 200-300 1/4 inch long feeders who will require fruit flies as their feeder. You can keep them together, but after a couple of weeks, their brother looks more tasty than the fruit flies! Their food after they get to be about an inch is Blue Bottle flies. As you can guess, once you seperate them, feeding and time becomes a PAIN!
You can get all your supplies and info @ Mantisplace.com, Rebecca is AMAZINGLY helpful.

 

[Lizardlover]

Yeah ive delt with her before, cant you feed them pinheads seems much easier and easier to gutload

 

[Chameleonboy]

Keep in mind that matids eat each other and once born you need to seperate every single one. I had 4 othicas hatch out at around the same time and there were about 1000 in my container running around so I just let all but 10 go. I put 10 in a glass enclousure and 1 of them ate all of them in a couple of days he jumped on one right in front of me and grabbed it by the neck untill it stoped moving. Dont want to burst your bubble but just letting you know. BTW they are good for your garden I hear I let them all go in my fruit trees and veggie garden and have seen 3 full grown ones from then till now.


-Clemonde

 

[Lizardlover]

Yeah i know that, just as Nick just said above, and knew about the garden thing (in my first post) thanks for trying to help though

 

[Chameleonboy]

lol oops I opened this post when there were no replies. I guess Nick got to it before me.

 

[Lizardlover]

no problem thanks anyways

 

[desultadox]

I hatched some ootheca thingies before and I figured at first they'd just eat other until they were big enough to eat crickets (i didn't really need 1000 of them anyway), but mine never ate each other... so they all died of starvation. nice guys finish last!

 

[Lizardlover]

wow....LOL what a story

 

[sandrachameleon]

Yes, you can offer them pinheads, and even small mealworms. i found they preferred the flies. Once they get big enough, I offered larger crickets, larger flies, mealworms, zophobas, butterworms, silkworms, wc moths, wc grasshoppers, etc.
Dont forget to mist LIGHTLY now and then.

If you offer enough flies and such, they are less likely to prey on each other. I kept in aqauriums and critter keepers and glass jars etc to the total of 50 different "houses". In the larger aquariums I was able to keep up to 5 together, so long as I offered plenty of food. I was keeping some as pets and wanted most for the greenhouse, but I did offer ones that didnt moult well to the chameleons, until they got big enough to fight back (and then I just let their brothers and sisters eat them).

And beware that when they first hatch they can go through screen if its not fine enough! If fruit flies can escape so can little mantids.

 

[Lizardlover]

Wow thanks, someone told me to put panti hose over the screen lid to ensure they dont escape