# Are these okay setups? [New Owner!]



## Rydiante (Feb 16, 2017)

We're expecting the arrival of our first mantis soon, an Indian Flower !

I went out and bought some jars/flowers/ect and made three tentative setups. The tiny jar will be for the earlier instars (they only grow to like an inch-inch and a half as adults), the bigger jar for subadult/adult and I'm not sure if I'll even use the travel cage but it's there. The two jars have a white plastic mesh on the top.

I'm not entirely confident at my image posting abilities so here's a link to them on imgur

http://imgur.com/a/Px7dT

Are these okay? Will he/she have enough room to molt? I followed the 3 by 2 rule but I'm still worried I'm forgetting something .

We also bought a dense moss like thing but I'm nervous the fruit flies will get lost in it. I'm also nervous using something flat like paper towels as I'm worried that he/she will get trapped under there somehow. Is no/little substrate okay? What would you recommend instead?

Thanks for hearing me out, just want everything to go O.K.


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## Jessie (Feb 16, 2017)

I am new but it might be good to put down some coucnut fiber down if you can. They need a stick to to molt. Found out alot of info reading up for like 5 hours lol.


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## crabbypatty (Feb 17, 2017)

@Rydiante You might want to replace the plastic mesh on the smaller homes, the holes are pretty big, any fruit fly will just crawl out. Perhaps try gluing a cloth like organza or some fine tulle, plus the fabric might be easier for little mantis feet to grab on to when it's time to molt. Glass is a little hard for them to climb on, so there's that as well. I keep my ghost in a giant glass jar but I filled it with tons of sticks for him to climb on. My smaller instar nymphs I keep with a paper towel on the bottom cut to be flush with the bottom of the deli cup, so there's no chance of getting stuck. They usually like to hang off of the lid anyway, I rarely see any of my creobroter on the bottom.


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## Rydiante (Feb 17, 2017)

crabbypatty said:


> @Rydiante You might want to replace the plastic mesh on the smaller homes, the holes are pretty big, any fruit fly will just crawl out. Perhaps try gluing a cloth like organza or some fine tulle, plus the fabric might be easier for little mantis feet to grab on to when it's time to molt. Glass is a little hard for them to climb on, so there's that as well. I keep my ghost in a giant glass jar but I filled it with tons of sticks for him to climb on. My smaller instar nymphs I keep with a paper towel on the bottom cut to be flush with the bottom of the deli cup, so there's no chance of getting stuck. They usually like to hang off of the lid anyway, I rarely see any of my creobroter on the bottom.


Thanks for the response! I'll see how they do with the climbing &amp; add extra stuff in there if needed. If it really doesn't work out I'll switch to using a deli-cup. I'll see what I can do about replacing the mesh.


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## Teamonger (Feb 17, 2017)

Everyone's covered pretty much everything. I'll just add that the sticks you add should allow your mantis to climb to the lid. As Crabby said they tend to spend most of their time up there and as its hard for them to climb on glass you should provide a path for them to get there. The lid is also one of the more common places they choose to molt from.


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